


bury me in this cold light

by kaspbrak_kid



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Blood and Injury, Coming Out, Confessions, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Healing, First Kiss, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Nightmares, Pining, Post-Canon, let's be real it's a fic about healing and self-love and being a werewolf, mentions of past character death (eddie's dad), mild body horror (werewolf transformations)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-11
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27495436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaspbrak_kid/pseuds/kaspbrak_kid
Summary: Things have been...rough, since Derry, and the fucking clown. The aftermath was a fucking mess, dealing with the hospitals, the recovery. Fending off well-meaning but nosy friends. Trying to convince everyone to let him go home. All while feeling likeabsoluteshit, with his insides constantly trying to be on his outsides. And then going home was also a mess, leaving was so fucking hard, especially when Richie...when Richie asked him to stay.But Eddie couldn’t stay. He had to go home. Fight with management, fight with Myra, remind himself over and over that he didn’t need her, didn’t need anyone. That she lied to him, like his mom lied to him, lied that he needed them. And then moving out was shit, and living alone was shit, and everything was shit, but. God, full moons are always the shittiest. And then the day after full moons are even worse than that. And he’s so fucking tired, and he needs to sleep, but everythinghurts.God, he hurts so fucking bad.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 330
Kudos: 449





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zach_stone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zach_stone/gifts).



> at last...the werewolf eddie fic i've been talking about on twitter since literally july. written for AJ for our clowniversary exchange! thank u to SAM for letting me yell/complain at you for 3 months and to my twitter followers who were forced to listen to me talk about this fic every single day since september. i am so sorry. title from "feed the wolf" by breaking benjamin.

Eddie wakes up on the ground.

He groans as he sits up, grass sticking to his bare skin, itchy and uncomfortable. His bones are sore, his joints aching. His throat is thick with the sharp scent of blood, and at first he thinks it’s just his—he can feel a cut on his forehead and it’s bled all down his face, crusting in his eyebrow. But then he turns, and he sees the mangled corpse of a small animal, probably a rabbit, chewed up and spit back out, and his stomach heaves. He throws up on the grass, and he has the feeling it’s not the first time.

It’s cold as fuck. It’s fucking _March,_ and Eddie’s teeth are chattering. He gets to his feet, which are already going numb, and wraps his arms tight around himself. He’s bare-ass fucking naked, with dirt and grime and blood in all the wrong places, and everything fucking _hurts._ His head is pounding. He accidentally scratched the cut open again. His knees are scraped raw. God, what a fucking way to wake up.

He starts moving quietly through the trees. Thankfully, he’s not far from home, and it’s still barely dawn. He’s tired, so fucking tired, but he knows he has to get home soon. Get somewhere safe and get clean. Before anyone sees him.

He thought it was a good idea, moving closer to the park, to open spaces. And maybe it was. But this keeps fucking happening.

He makes it back to his apartment just as the sun is creeping over the horizon, and scrambles inside through the open window, which he obviously needs a better lock for. He lands inside and just lies there for a minute, shivering, aching, groaning. Bleeding. God, he’s bleeding on the fucking floor. Christ.

He pulls himself upright. Finds some clean clothes, practically has to crawl into the bathroom. Turns on the shower and then just lies in the tub and lets it spray down on him, washing away his filth, warming up his stiff body. He lets the water go hot, so hot it burns a little. It makes his skin itch fiercely, but it also helps him feel a little bit more alive, so he takes what he can.

He stays in the water for longer than he means to, puts the stopper in and lets it rise around him, scrubs himself with a rough washcloth he’ll need to throw away after. He hisses through the pain of washing out his various cuts and scrubbing over his myriad bruises, ducks his hair under the spray of water and scrubs out the blood and filth, and then hauls himself out of the bath and into a towel. And if he lies on his bathroom floor for a while after that, well. Nobody has to know.

Eventually he gets into his clothes, though, and spends a good ten minutes brushing his teeth, and then flossing and gargling mouthwash and brushing them again, and then, _finally,_ he climbs into bed. The sunrise is just going rosy outside his window. He can hear Martin moving around in another room. He closes his eyes. _His_ day isn’t fucking beginning yet.

He takes stock of things as he waits to drift off. It takes some time to review his memories, which are...fuzzy, especially when he’s this tired, but intact. He knows _he’s_ okay—bloody, but whole. He always is. It takes him longer to reassure himself that no one else got hurt. Apart from that rabbit. Fuck.

Things have been...rough, since Derry, and the fucking clown. The aftermath was a fucking mess, dealing with the hospitals, the recovery. Fending off well-meaning but nosy friends. Trying to convince everyone to let him go home. All while feeling like _absolute_ shit, with his insides constantly trying to be on his outsides. And then going home was also a mess, leaving was so fucking hard, especially when Richie...when Richie asked him to stay.

But Eddie couldn’t stay. He had to go home. Fight with management, fight with Myra, remind himself over and over that he didn’t need her, didn’t need anyone. That she lied to him, like his mom lied to him, lied that he needed them. And then moving out was shit, and living alone was shit, and everything was shit, but. God, full moons are always the shittiest. And then the day after full moons are even worse than that. And he’s so fucking tired, and he needs to sleep, but everything _hurts._ God, he hurts so fucking bad.

His head throbs. He forgot to dress his fucking head wound, but he’s too tired to get up and do it now. He feels like his bones are cracking every time he moves. His limbs are filled with lead. His joints are poison. His eyes burn, and it takes him a while to realize it’s because there are hot tears dripping onto his pillow. He sighs, wipes his face. It’s fine. He’s fine. He gets through it every month. Always has. Always will.

But right now, in this moment, it’s hard. He’s exhausted and he’s in pain and he can’t fall asleep because everything is so. It’s so hard. He pulls his blanket up over his head and breathes into the damp, warm air underneath, curled in on himself, and tries to think about good things. Easy things. Warm things. 

He thinks about Richie, who is all three. It makes him feel a little sick with himself, but he thinks about Richie’s laugh, and his smiling face, and it soothes him. He thinks about Richie’s hands, big and warm and sure as they hold onto Eddie, as they grip his shoulders, hold him steady under Neibolt, in the hospital. He feels the ghost of Richie’s hand wrapped around his, in those first days after they killed It, and Eddie was just out of surgery, and he pretended not to be awake just to feel it a little longer. He thinks about the cadence of Richie’s voice, and misses him so much it makes him want to throw up. He misses all of them. Hasn’t seen them since Christmas. But he misses Richie the most. 

He thinks about it until it hurts more than it heals, and then he snakes his hand out from under the covers, finds his phone. Opens his voicemail for the third time this week, finds the only one he keeps saved there. Closes his eyes as he lets it play. 

_“Hey, Spaghetti Man,”_ Richie says, half-laughing, like someone said something funny just before the call went through. 

“Hey,” Eddie whispers back. And then he falls silent to listen to the rest, like it’s a lullaby. Lets it soothe him to sleep.

God, sometimes it’s so fucking hard. But he keeps going, because he always does. No rest for the wicked. And of course that includes werewolves.

🌕

Richie is worried about Eddie. He’s acting weird. He’s _been_ acting weird. He’s been—he’s been weird since Derry, and okay, Richie didn’t see him for over two decades before that and that kind of negates any opinions he might have about what Eddie’s supposed to be like as a person, but. Richie feels like...like he _knows_ Eddie. He still knows him.

“It’s just. I don’t know, Bev.” Richie sighs, rubbing his hands over his face, elbows propped on the table between them. “I don’t know. He’s been distant.”

“Yeah,” Bev hums, sipping on a mimosa. “I know what you mean.”

“Like, I know things have been crazy for everyone since we all came back from Derry,” Richie says, poking at the remains of his french toast. “And. You know, people have been busy. I get that. Not everyone can always be available when we meet up and stuff. And it’s not like everyone can just...get up and move their lives across the country.”

“You’re just sad it was me and Ben who came down for the winter and not Eddie,” Bev teases.

“That’s not true!” Richie insists. “I cherish our weekly brunch dates.”

Bev makes an unconvinced sound, but her eyes are concerned. “It does seem like he’s been a bit...less present. Than the rest of us.”

“Even Stan gives us weekly updates on what he’s been up to!” Richie says, and tries not to sound like he’s whining. _“Stan!_ Who spends most of his energy trying to pretend he doesn’t even like us!”

“Maybe Eddie just doesn’t feel like we care to know?” Bev says.

“I ask him all the time what he’s up to,” Richie says with a huff. “I feel like a fucking private investigator. _Sir, what were you doing at 6pm last Tuesday night? Spare no detail.”_

Bev laughs softly. “I know. But it’s harder for some people. To be open.”

“I know, but.” He drags a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.”

“It’s not like he’s been _completely_ absent,” Bev says. “He’s...around. He always says something when I send a picture in the group chat.”

“No one dares ignore an update from Beverly Marsh,” Richie says.

Bev snorts. “It’s not just me. He asks Mike about his trip, and stuff like that. He always responds to my texts.”

“But does he ever text _you?”_ Richie presses. “Does he ever offer anything about himself? And he’s like. He’s always coming up with excuses for why he can’t come see us, or has to leave before everyone else, or whatever.”

“He might be telling the truth, you know,” Bev says lightly. “Maybe he’s just busy.”

“With _what?_ Risk analysis? I don’t even know what the fuck that is, Bev! He won’t tell me! It’s like he’s leading a double life!”

“He won’t tell you because you made fun of him last time you asked,” Bev says. “Honey, I know you miss him. I know.”

Richie almost whines out loud. God, he _does._ He misses him so fucking bad. He saw him a couple months ago, when they all piled into Bill and Audra’s fancy-ass Beverly Hills home to celebrate the holidays together, and it was as painful as it was wonderful, seeing him again. He’d looked tired, but happy, surrounded by all of them. He’d had to go home a day earlier than everyone else, for work he said. Richie had straight-up almost cried about it.

“But,” Bev continues, “I’m sure there’s a better explanation for him being a little distant than him leading a double life. He just went through a divorce, Rich. He nearly died, and then had major surgery, and then he went home and got a divorce. That’s not easy. He’s probably just...dealing with some things.”

“Why won’t he let us deal with it with him?” Richie asks pathetically. “He didn’t even come to my birthday party.”

Bev reaches across the table to hold his hand, her fingers cold and wet from the condensation of her cup. “He had a work conference, sweetie.”

Richie shrugs sadly. That’s what Eddie said, at least. “I don’t know. It’s not even just that he’s been distant, I don’t think. Like... I feel like he’s been cold, sometimes. And defensive. And that’s not the Eddie we knew, right? That’s not the Eddie I knew.”

“The Eddie you knew was a kid, Rich. He’s grown up. He’s changed. We all have.”

Richie sighs, pokes at a blueberry that was too squishy to eat. “He was warm. As a kid. And...like, he was a spitfire, sure. But he was _affectionate._ And he was...it’s not that he was an open book, but he always spoke his mind. Talked my ear off.”

“A lot has happened to him since then,” Bev says gently.

“I know.” Richie squishes the blueberry under his thumb, and it stains his skin purple. “I’m just worried about him. And. I know he left Myra, but.” He bites his lip, isn’t sure if he should even voice this. If it makes him a dick to say this. “I don’t know. It still seems like he’s sick a lot.”

Bev is quiet for a minute, finishing off her mimosa, sunglasses pulled down over her eyes so that Richie can’t see what she’s thinking. He wonders if he should regret saying anything, but he doesn’t. He’s _worried._ He’s tired of being so worried.

Eventually, Bev sighs. “He _did_ go through major surgery seven months ago.”

“He seemed fine at Christmas!”

Bev shrugs. “They probably pumped him full of antibiotics and shit. That fucks with your immune system.”

Richie groans. “I just. I don’t want him to...go through things alone. I don’t like that he’s trying to go through everything alone.”

“Yeah,” Bev agrees, and then she bites her lip. “I...feel bad for leaving him there. In New York. Maybe we should have stayed.”

“He probably wouldn’t have let you do anything anyway,” Richie sighs.

“Maybe we should have taken him with us,” Bev says.

Richie shrugs. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think about...going there.”

Bev arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow. The gossip rags always go wild when they see the two of them together—Bev always looking like a summer goddess in the latest fashion, and Richie perpetually resembling a moldy slice of white bread next to her. No one can seem to figure out why they’re friends. “You’re thinking of moving to New York?”

“Oh god, no,” Richie says. “Just, you know. Going to see him. Eddie. Going to see Eddie.”

He doesn’t know why he’s suddenly so fucking nervous under her gaze, which is somehow pointed even through her giant sunglasses. It’s not like she... It’s not like she _knows._ Right? She can’t know. She doesn’t know anything.

Maybe he’s not doing the best job at being subtle, though.

But Bev just laughs. “So why don’t you?”

“What, go to New York? I guarantee if I asked Eddie he’d tell me not to. That’s the _problem,_ Bev. He keeps acting like he doesn’t want to see us. And.” He sighs, rubs a hand over his face again. “I don’t know. I’m scared of losing him. Again. I’m fucking scared.”

Bev shrugs, twirling the paper umbrella from her drink. “So don’t tell him. Make it a surprise.”

Richie blinks. “Just...go? Just show up at his fucking door?”

“Yeah, Rich, why not? Didn’t you say you have like a week free between those two shows later this month? Just go. Check on him. Make sure he’s okay.” She smiles softly. “I’m worried about him, too. I don’t want you to freak out, because I’m sure he’d tell us if anything was really wrong, but I’d like to know he’s okay. And I think he’s probably lonely, even if he’ll never admit it. You should go.”

Richie thinks about it for a minute, still a little stunned by the prospect. He could, couldn’t he? He could just go. He could go to New York, and see Eddie, and. Ask him in person. How he is, and if he needs help, and. And if he misses Richie, the same way Richie misses him.

He won’t ask that. He’s too scared of the answer.

But he could go. He could see Eddie. He could hear his voice, make him laugh. Be _close_ to him. It almost feels like a dream.

“Yeah,” he says at last, a little dazed. “Yeah. Maybe I will.”

🌕

Eddie sometimes feels like he experiences life in a series of snapshots. Relives them, more often than he’d like, in his dreams. Nightmares. Over and over and over, bright points of chaos in an otherwise cold, grey existence. 

One. He is six years old. It is his earliest memory—everything before that is erased when he changes. His life begins in this moment. He is camping with his father, in the cold Acadian forests of northwest Maine, where the nights are dark and damp and the trees are always moving. He isn’t scared of the woods. He doesn’t know what might come out of them. He crawls out of the tent in the night to go to the bathroom. There is a rustling in the brush. Eddie isn’t scared. 

Two. Everything changes in the space of a second. A flash of eyes. A lightning-quick shadow, bigger than Eddie, bigger than his dad, that knocks him to the ground, pins him under crushing weight. A sound like terror, and death. And then pain. When Eddie remembers this moment in his life, it’s always stretched out, slow, not like it was when he first witnessed it. Every moment, every emotion, experienced over and over in an echo. The eyes (the eyes) (the eyes). The shadow (the shadow) (the shadow). The noise (the noise) (the noise). The teeth. The teeth. The teeth. The teeth.

The blood. So much fucking blood. 

Three. He screams. The shadow disappears, dashes back into the woods, never to be seen again. Eddie never learns who they were, if they understood what they did, if they think of him. Eddie is too busy bleeding on the forest floor from a gaping bite wound in his thigh. His dad is at his side, trying to staunch the flow. He is asking what happened, and Eddie doesn’t know. He doesn’t know for a long time. 

Four. He is sitting in a hospital, the first of many. It has been a week since the bite. It hasn’t healed yet, but they know there will be a huge, raised scar. He is getting stronger, and does not realize that once the moon begins to wax again, this will turn to weakness and exhaustion. His parents are scared. His doctors are baffled. Eddie doesn’t know it yet, but this is about to become his life. 

Five. Eddie thinks he’s getting sick again. His parents are debating bringing him back to the hospital. He is restless and itching and so, so hungry. He wants to scream and he doesn’t know why. He feels pulled, but if he follows the sensation, it only leads him to the window, towards the sky. Night falls. The moon hangs fat and full between the clouds. And then he changes, and it’s the most painful, terrible thing he’s ever experienced. His body breaks down and rebuilds. He has never been so scared, will never be that scared again. There is no fear worse than fear of something that comes from inside you. And through it all, Eddie watches his parents’ faces, their terror, their horror. He thinks they might kill him, if the pain of whatever is happening to him doesn’t do it first. 

Six. He wakes up in the morning, somehow whole, somehow human. The remnants of his wound have healed over completely. His mother does not look at him for a week. His father sits with him for hours. Eddie is scared of how sad he looks. He is scared of what it means. 

Seven. Eddie sits at his father’s bedside, just like his father sat at his the morning after every full moon for two years. Eddie’s dad has been so good to him, so strong and brave and patient, has loved him so much and stood by him no matter what, has been so scared but sat with him anyway. So Eddie does the same for him. It’s so hard, but he tries. He is eight when his dad leaves him. 

Eight. Eddie sits in the hospital, again, again, and a doctor hands him an inhaler. His mother smiles and thanks him, tells Eddie he will be better now, will feel better. As if it’s Eddie’s lungs that torment him every month, as if it’s something other than his father’s death that makes him gasp for breath as a full moon approaches and Eddie knows he’ll be alone. His mother doesn’t hate him, but she doesn’t love him like she should. She treats his condition like a curse, she makes him scared, because _she’s_ scared. She makes him sick, though he doesn’t know it at the time. She makes him sick, just to keep him safe, thinking she’s keeping him safe. Thinking that’s how you love someone. 

She convinces herself, eventually. Of all these comorbidities she makes up to keep Eddie inside, to keep him under control. She gets scared for him, and makes him think it’s all real. She makes him so scared of himself, too scared to tell anyone, even his friends. It’s a wonder she ever lets him out of the house, ever lets him go to school. She makes up so many lies to keep everyone in the dark, to make excuses for his absences, and then she starts to believe them. Eddie is sick, he’s weak, he needs medication and to be home.

Nine. Eddie’s mom feeds him colloidal silver, on a hot summer Sunday. It’s been touted as a cure for cancer, for AIDS, for everything under the sun. Eddie believes, in that moment, that she means it to be a medicine. To keep him strong. Later, after he has thrown up blood for hours and stayed in bed a week, he thinks, _maybe she’s trying to purge the wolf out of me._ But it would have killed him first. It would have killed him. Much later than that, he wonders if she ever gave it to him again. In smaller doses. If she ever made him sick on purpose. He never dares to ask. 

Ten. Eddie sneaks into the movie theatre with Richie. Despite everything—despite being sick, being scared—Eddie makes friends, good friends, and he’s eager to keep them. He sneaks into the movie theatre, because Richie wants to see whatever R-rated horror movie is playing, and Eddie is sure nothing can be as scary as his reality. And there in the back of a dark theatre, feeling Richie’s clammy hand on his bare forearm, blunt fingernails digging into his skin, Eddie sees himself on the screen. A monster. A terrible, bloodthirsty creature that exists to be feared, and ultimately destroyed. A thing of evil. Eddie leaves before the movie is over. He throws up in the sticky theatre bathroom. Richie laughs and says it’s because he ate too much popcorn, pats Eddie’s back. Eddie thinks it cannot get worse than this. It cannot get worse than this horrible realisation, this full weight of what he has to live with. 

Eleven. Richie is tired in class. Richie has circles under his eyes. Richie does not want to play in the woods for months. They are the same woods that Eddie scrambles through on all fours every time he manages to break out of his parents’ house on full moons. Richie admits he keeps having nightmares. Eddie isn’t scared of the woods—he’s the thing to be scared _of._

Twelve. Kids in Derry are going missing, and Eddie’s friends are seeing things. Eddie has seen things. This is at the height of Eddie’s fear of being diseased, of being something inhuman and monstrous, and It knows. But nothing is worse than Richie telling them that what he saw, what It showed him, was a werewolf. That is Richie’s greatest fear. 

A fucking werewolf. 

If there was ever a time when Eddie thought he might tell his friends the truth, that is the moment it ends. 

Thirteen. Richie touches him, the way any friend who doesn’t know what you are might, and Eddie realizes something new to hate himself for. Eddie already hates himself so much, every fucking day, for a hundred different things—for how weak he is, how small and powerless and sick, how monstrous and terrible—but now he discovers something new. A new, terrible monster inside him, one that wants to reach out when Richie is close to him, wants to touch him. Eddie swallows it down and treats it like every other demon he harbours. He hides it away, and learns to live with the fact that anyone who knew would hate him as much as he hates himself. 

Fourteen. They go back to Neibolt, Eddie with his arm that is no longer broken but still in a cast. They get rid of It. Eddie is happy, at least, to kill one of the monsters that haunts Derry. He is happy to be here with his friends. He is happy that instead of hurting people, he is able to help them. He is able to be brave. This is the last moment of bright clarity in his life before a long, dark fog consumes him as he leaves Derry. 

Fifteen. He is forty years old, and opens his eyes for the first time since he was a child. He crashes his car and gets out, unharmed. He flies to Derry. He walks into a restaurant. He sees his friends. He sees Richie. He still wants to touch him. There are two monsters in Derry again. 

Sixteen. That _fucking_ mutant dog under Neibolt. Richie and Eddie’s fear are the same, now. Richie’s is still werewolves. Eddie’s is himself. 

Richie tries to protect Eddie from it. The irony disgusts him. 

Seventeen. The Deadlights. Richie. The fence post in Eddie’s hand. The claw through his chest. He nearly dies there, under Neibolt. Blood and claw burst through bone, and it should kill him. But if there’s one thing Eddie knows, it’s that monsters are fucking hard to kill. He coughs up blood, holds Richie’s jacket to the gaping wound, and regrets nothing. He thinks, for a while, that this might really be it. That he might really be done for. And he thinks, _good._ He thinks, _two monsters will die here today._ He thinks, _at least I died saving him._

But in the end it’s the monster that saves him, two short weeks later, when his body tears itself apart and then stitches itself back together, and doesn’t bother to leave the wound. Eddie isn’t sure if he’s supposed to be grateful.

Eight months later, there’s a knock at Eddie’s door, late in the day after a rough night of bloody nightmares and a long day of poorly-done work, and he hates, even now, how his hackles rise immediately. He hates the growl that builds in his throat. He hates the way his blood sings through his veins, and his brain goes dark and his skin prickles and all he can think is _intruder. Territory. Trespasser._

He scowls at himself, disgusted again, as he pads across the apartment to check who it is. He’s been alone too long. He’s let himself go too much. He’s not a _fucking_ animal. 

He feels like one, a little, when he opens the door and Richie is standing there, and all Eddie wants to do, despite his shock, is jump on him. 

“What the fuck,” Eddie says. _“Richie?”_

“Hey,” Richie says, standing on his fucking doorstep, grinning his little, crooked grin. “Surprise?”

Eddie can’t find his voice. He just stands there and stares, and Richie stares back, clearly uncertain how to react to Eddie’s reaction. And then there’s a blur of motion streaking past Eddie’s legs into the hallway, and on instinct Eddie is dashing out after it, sprinting down the hall to catch it. 

“What?” Richie says behind him, almost a yelp. 

“Sorry!” Eddie says, and manages to scoop the escapee into his arms just before it reaches the stairs. 

Richie watches him walk back, now wearing the same expression Eddie undoubtedly was. “What the fuck is that?”

Eddie scowls, as unhappy as the creature in his arms. “It’s a cat,” he says. “Or so I’m told.”

“Oh my god,” Richie says. “You have a cat? You didn’t tell me you have a cat! Eddie, you have a _naked goblin cat?”_

“No,” Eddie says, “he’s my neighbour’s.”

“What? Then why was he in _your house?”_

Eddie huffs, lobbing Martin gently back through his door and following him in. “Come in, before he escapes again.” He turns to the demon glaring at him from the kitchen table. “Get off of there, you horrible little freak. One day I’m just going to let you run away, and then what? Asshole.”

“Eddie,” Richie admonishes, closing the door behind him. “That’s not a nice thing to say to a perfectly good cat.”

“He’s evil,” Eddie tells him. “He’s evil and he hates me and I hate him back. This is a relationship built on mutual hatred.”

“Uh huh,” Richie says, glancing at the elaborate cat tower and multitude of cat toys scattered around a plush bed taking up the majority of the living room. 

“I said I hate him, not that I want him to live an unenriched life,” Eddie says. “It’s just until his owner comes back. Eventually. I hope.” And then, “What are _you_ doing here?”

Immediately, Richie is sheepish again, scratching the back of his head. “I, um. Came to see you?”

“In New York? At my house? With no warning?” Something about it rubs Eddie the wrong way—the lack of time to prepare, the lack of time to plan ahead. Automatically, he pulls out his phone, double-checks the date. He has a week until the next full moon. It still makes him itchy with anxiety 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I, um. It was meant to be a surprise. You know, like a nice one.” And then, more hesitantly, “I thought you would be happy to see me.”

Eddie swallows thickly. Everything inside him screams at him, pulls him in opposing directions. Towards Richie, to touch him, to smell him, to be close to him. And away. To keep his distance. To keep him safe. “I am,” he says. “I am, god, I just. I wasn’t expecting you. You’re in _New York._ In my house.”

“Yeah,” Richie says. “I’ve never seen it before, did you realize that? Had no idea what your new place looked like.” He looks around. “It’s...small.”

“I’m a bachelor, dumbnuts,” Eddie says, as if Richie isn’t a bachelor, too. 

Richie laughs, quick and short. “Yeah. I guess. And you’re a small guy.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up.”

Richie’s smile goes tentatively warm. “I just wanted to see you,” he says. “I missed you.”

And Eddie hates how fucking soft he goes, instantly. God, he’s missed him too. So fucking bad. “How long are you staying?” 

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “A few days. How long will you let me bother you?”

“We’ll see,” Eddie says. And then, “I missed you too.”

Richie’s smile goes wide and toothy. Eddie’s knees go weak in response. “Yeah,” Richie says, soft and deep. 

God, this is probably a bad fucking idea. But Eddie is lonely. And greedy. And. Wolves are pack animals. 

And Eddie’s missed him so goddamn much. 

🌕

There’s something weirdly jarring about watching Eddie sit on his couch in a t-shirt and sweatpants with a cat napping in his lap, one hand curled carefully around its naked rump, the other holding onto a steaming mug. 

He looks...young. Whenever Richie sees Eddie—on the three occasions Richie has seen Eddie since they were kids—he’s dressed in neat, adult clothes, hair gelled back, phone pinging every time he gets a work email. Seeing him like this, at home, in comfortable clothes and bare feet, Richie almost feels like he’s looking at a different person. His hair is sticking up in every direction, curling at the edges. Richie didn’t even know his hair _curled._ He looks...warm. Soft. Something embarrassingly deep and wanting yawns inside his gut, and it takes everything inside Richie not to reach out and touch him. Eddie looking so comfortable and touchable is not an invitation. 

“You should just stay here,” Eddie says, and Richie blinks, backpedals, tries to figure out what his treacherous mouth was saying while his mind was elsewhere. 

“Huh?”

“You said you don’t have a hotel. You can just stay here. If you want.” Eddie’s taking a long drink of his coffee, hiding his face in his mug, like he doesn’t want to make eye contact. “You don’t have to. But feel free. This couch is a pull-out.” And then, “Sorry if it smells like, uh. Dog.”

“Why would it smell like dog?” Richie says, still trying to wrap his head around the offer. He’d barely been able to convince Eddie to let him stay at all, and now Eddie wants him to stay _at his house?_ He’d been expecting a three-hours-a-day limit or something. 

Eddie gestures vaguely with his mug, and then looks down at the cat sleeping on him to make sure he hasn’t slopped any coffee on him. “It’s, uh. I got it from someone with a dog.”

“And you didn’t immediately get it dry cleaned within an inch of its life?” Richie asks. “Am I in the wrong house? The wrong _timeline?”_

Eddie snorts. “It’s not like _I_ sleep on the pull-out. I have a fucking bed.” Richie hums doubtfully, and Eddie rolls his eyes and says, “Do you want to stay or not? I can help you find a hotel if you want. They’re just disgusting.”

“No, no, I’ll stay,” Richie says quickly, before Eddie can change his mind. Gift horse, mouth, whatever. And then, eager not to let Eddie overthink it, he adds, “I thought you said the cat hated you.”

Eddie scowls, looking down at his lap again. “He does.”

“He’s sleeping on you. Willingly.”

“He’s using me for his own evil purposes,” Eddie says. “He gets cold.”

“He’s letting you pet him.”

“No he’s not, he’s _making me_ put my hand on him, right there in that single acceptable spot. Look.” He removes his hand, and immediately the cat lifts his wrinkly goblin head and meows loudly. Eddie makes a face at him, and he meows again, over and over, looking him directly in the face, until Eddie puts the hand back, at which point he shuts up and goes back to sleep. “And,” Eddie says, “if I try to pet him—” He strokes his hand up the cat’s bony spine, and it starts rumbling with a warning growl until Eddie moves the hand back down to his rump. “He’s awful,” Eddie says. “I hate him.”

“I love him more than I can even describe,” Richie says seriously. “What’s his name?”

“Martin,” Eddie says with all of the contempt in his compact little body. 

Richie wants to reiterate his previous sentiment, but this time about the man _holding_ the cat. He does not do so aloud. 

“So what have you been up to?” Richie asks, leaning back in his armchair. Eddie’s place is small, but it’s nice, a little apartment on the border of a sprawling park, and a lot of the stuff inside seems new—Richie’s pretty sure Eddie let Myra have most of the stuff in their house just to speed up the process. He has no idea why Eddie might have gotten a couch set secondhand, but he figures now might not be the time to ask. 

Eddie shrugs, trying to shift into a new position while Martin grumbles another high growl. “I dunno. Working. Sleeping. Catching up on like ten year’s worth of TV that Myra didn’t like.”

Richie hums. “How are...things? With the divorce, and everything?”

He expects Eddie to be touchy about it, to be walking on glass around a topic so fraught with tension and complex history, but he just shrugs, says, “The whole process was a bitch, obviously, but it’s more or less over now. Everything is finalized, the house is on the market, I don’t really ever have to talk to Myra anymore.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Man, you...never keep us in the loop about these things.”

“I told you all when everything went through,” Eddie says, frowning. 

“Yeah, but like. Dude, I’ve never been divorced, I don’t know what things mean. I didn’t know it was like... _over_ over.”

Eddie shrugs. “We don’t have any kids, so it was like...mostly just a matter of splitting up assets and shit. I was a bit of a pussy about letting her take whatever but I just wanted to get out, so. Whatever. No regrets.”

Richie chews on his lip, reaches out with his foot to kick Eddie’s knee gently. “You’re happy?”

Eddie blinks, gives him an odd look. “Yeah, I’m. I mean. I’m glad I did it.”

That’s not what Richie asked. But Eddie doesn’t _look_ miserable, here in his home with his cat and his cup of coffee that was way too strong for Richie to drink this late. He looks...tired, maybe. A little haggard around the edges. But he looks okay. And that’s enough for Richie, for now. 

“Good,” he says. “Hey, you wanna watch a movie or something? I’ll order in pizza?”

Eddie grins, a soft thing that makes Richie weak-kneed. “Sure. You pick.” And then, “But nothing scary.”

Richie laughs. “Yeah, no worries, I’ve had enough of monsters for one lifetime.”

He doesn’t miss the way Eddie’s smile falters at that. So maybe it’s Derry. Maybe it’s the reminder of that that keeps Eddie away, keeps him quiet and withdrawn. 

He doesn’t press it. Not for now. For now, he just. Wants to see a movie with his best friend. 

But if Richie thought Eddie in sweats holding a cat was a surprise, he was wildly unprepared for Eddie on the same couch as him, covered in pizza crumbs, eyes on the TV screen as he slowly but surely migrates across the cushions until their knees are touching. As Richie chews on a leftover pizza crust and pretends to watch the movie, he wonders desperately if he’s watched a movie with Eddie since reuniting. He definitely hasn’t—and now that he thinks about it, he hasn’t even been _alone_ with Eddie since...since fucking _Neibolt,_ since the doors and the fucking pomeranian. Not unless you count the hospital room, and Eddie unconscious on the bed. God, isn’t that a thought. 

Just a week ago, he was talking to Bev about Eddie being distant and cold, but now, in this moment, Eddie is. Eddie is moving towards him on the couch, he’s making contact with Richie that he definitely doesn’t _have_ to be making. It’s dark in the room, but Richie could not be more aware of the fact that they began the movie with a good two feet of space between them, and now Eddie is practically pressing into his side, close enough for their arms to brush when Richie gives up on his pizza crust. The cat is curled up on the cushion next to Eddie’s thigh, forcing him in closer, but he rumbles angrily every time Eddie moves. And Eddie _keeps moving._ He lifts up his leg to tuck his foot under the opposite thigh, and it presses his knee into Richie’s. He leans back, and it squeezes his shoulder behind Richie’s arm. He tilts his head to the side, and his cheek brushes against Richie’s shoulder. 

Richie knows it’s pathetic, but he’s like. He’s obsessed with it. He and Eddie used to be tactile, used to be constantly touching as kids. That was mostly on Richie, he’s pretty sure—a kid with a crush who found any excuse to reach out, to test his boundaries. But he’d _never_ expected adult, buttoned-up, closed-off Eddie to be the same way. Would have never gotten his hopes up, never even _dreamed_ of it. 

But here he is, with his messy hair tickling the skin just above the collar of Richie’s shirt, and his arm kind of wedged between Richie’s arm and torso almost like they’re linked, and his knee pushed up and over Richie’s thigh, and. He’s practically in Richie’s lap, is all, and Richie thinks he’s going to lose his mind about it. To be quite honest, Richie went like twenty-five years without anyone really ever touching him, and only recently has he started to see his friends again on a regular basis, but never like. Richie can’t remember anything like this. Not this kind of easy, prolonged contact, this thing that says, in big bold letters, _you are my friend, and not only do I not hate touching you, but I even maybe like it._

It makes Richie want to cry, a little. But mostly it makes his chest ache with just. How much he _fucking_ likes Eddie. God, he likes him so much. And if he didn’t, if he liked him less, a normal amount, he would say something about this, tease Eddie for practically crawling into his lap, for grumbling exactly like his cat does whenever Richie dares to move a little. But Richie knows he can’t. He can’t risk Eddie getting embarrassed, moving away, never touching him again like this. Richie would never forgive himself for something like that. He never wants this to stop. 

He almost makes a noise when Eddie shifts like he’s going to move away, but all he does is pull back, shake his head, settle it on Richie’s shoulder again. Richie swallows thickly and says, voice low, “You falling asleep on me, Spaghetti Man?”

Eddie makes a vague sound. “Long day.”

It takes all of Richie’s willpower not to shiver at the sound of his voice, low and rough. He clears his throat. “Put your head in my lap.”

“Hm?”

Richie almost chickens out of repeating it. “You can put your head in my lap. If you’re going to fall asleep anyway.”

“Mmm.” 

Nothing happens, and Richie assumes he either thought Richie was joking, or just doesn’t want to. He regrets saying anything. Maybe that’s...too much. Richie doesn’t fucking know. He’s not _good at this._ He doesn’t know what too much is, between friends. Between...presumably straight, totally platonic childhood friends who have just recently reconnected. Fuck. Sometimes Richie thinks he’ll never be able to tell them. To tell Eddie. 

And then Eddie says, speech clumsy, “Martin won’t like it if I move.”

A grin tugs at Richie’s mouth. “I thought you hated him.”

“I value my life.”

Richie reaches across Eddie’s lap to prod at the sleeping cat tucked up against him. “Hey, Marty. Budge up.”

“Oh, god, don’t call him that. That’s my ex-wife’s name.”

Richie snorts inelegantly. “What about just _Arty.”_

“That’s dumb, that’s not even. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Oh boy then you’re going to _hate_ my next suggestion.”

“Just call him Martin, jesus, it’s two syllables.”

“It’s like you don’t know me at all, Eddie Spaghetti.”

Eddie grumbles, and shifts, and Martin makes an annoyed noise. 

“Move it, Mitzy,” Richie says, shoving at the cat until he yowls. 

“You’re right, I do hate it,” Eddie yawns.

Richie laughs, and then, to his surprise, Eddie _does_ move, and it’s not to pull away, or to drag himself to the bathroom to get ready for bed. Instead, he’s...he’s actually shifting to pull his legs up onto the couch, and pillowing his head on Richie’s thigh. He’s making himself comfortable, letting Martin curl up behind his knees. He’s falling asleep on Richie, and Richie had been so so scared of losing him, and now he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. And he’s starting to think that if he _does_ lose him, in the end, it’ll be a thousand times worse. 

But he can’t think about that. He can barely think about that now, with his head fuzzy just from Eddie’s head in his lap. Eddie touching him and...being close to him. It makes Richie’s entire body buzz with equal parts pleasure and anxiety, with the desire to give and receive affection but also the worry that it’s too much, that he’ll do something wrong, that Eddie will see right through him even though Eddie’s the one who initiated. Still, Richie would die before he pulled away. 

And before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s resting one hand on top of Eddie’s head, scratching it gently like he’s a dog, and Eddie is humming, pressing into it only half-consciously. Warmth suffuses through Richie’s chest, up his arm and into his skull. He pauses, and Eddie huffs and nudges his head up, like he wants Richie to keep going. Powerful, visceral urges sweep through him, to curl his hands in Eddie’s hair and to lean down and. His first urge is to crush their mouths together, climb on top of him and kiss him hard and fast, but Eddie sighs and makes a sleepy noise and the thought gentles, turns into something slow and sweet. 

Richie shakes himself out of it. He’s not going to do that. Obviously. 

Just this is good. Just this is more than enough. He never even dreamed of something like this. 

🌕

It’s dangerously nice, having Richie around. 

Eddie plans to send him packing after a day or two. He really does. The full moon is approaching, which means Eddie is going to become increasingly tired and waspish as he begins his monthly routine of beating the beast inside him into submission. He’s going to become a worse and worse roommate, for one thing, but it’ll also get harder and harder to hide the wolfish parts of him, the instincts he can only fight for so long. 

It’s strange, how it was easier, somehow, to hide it as a kid. When you’re eleven, you’re allowed to be kind of weird, you’re allowed to snap your teeth at your friends and run around in the forest and let your whole body wiggle when you’re excited about something. As an adult, it’s not so easy. You care more about seeming...normal. You care more about the urge to lick the hand resting on your shoulder, and to press your face into someone’s neck just to smell them, and to fucking. Howl at the moon like a lunatic. 

You care more about the fact that you fell asleep on your best friend, just because it felt so good to press into someone, to breathe in their scent and let it soak into you. Just because he offered, and you’re a werewolf, not a fucking lapdog, but there’s a reason man was able to domesticate wolves. Just because he scratched your fucking head, and you were tired, and the wolf that lives in your chest hasn’t been fed like that in decades, and it was impossible to pull away. 

Christ. It was so fucking embarrassing, when he woke up at midnight and the movie was over and Richie was asleep and his hand was still in Eddie’s hair and Eddie realized what he’d let happen. And then he’d dragged himself to his room and promised himself he’d send Richie home the next day because he couldn’t afford to get used to this, couldn’t afford to let the _wolf_ get used to this. 

It’s so easy to separate the two of them in his head. Eddie and the wolf. Especially because Eddie can feel it as a separate entity sometimes, a separate beast that claws at his chest, lives in his thoughts. But they’re the same thing. The same being. The wolf is part of him, even if his instincts wax and wane with the moon. Its thoughts are not separate from his own. It’s all Eddie. 

Eddie wants Richie to stay. _Eddie_ wanted to stay, back in Derry, when Richie asked him to. He wanted to stay, during the holidays, when Richie went with him to the airport before anyone else. And now Richie has come to him, and Eddie doesn’t want to let him go. That’s the reason, in the end, why Eddie is always hesitant to see everyone. It’s never because he doesn’t want to. It’s never because he doesn’t yearn for that connection. It’s because he won’t know how to let go. And if he doesn’t let go, there’s no way he’ll be able to keep the wolf—himself—a secret. 

So he’d told himself he’d make Richie go home. Make the necessary excuses, tell Richie he’s fine, he needs to work, Richie can hang around New York if he wants but Eddie can’t afford to babysit him. Be a little mean, if he has to. Just to get Richie to go. Just so he doesn’t ask Richie to stay. 

And then he wakes up the next morning, and he can already smell the coffee Richie has obviously made them, and he can hear Richie talking to Martin in the kitchen, asking him where Eddie keeps the cat food. And when he drags himself out of bed, Richie is sitting on the counter, feet swinging as he spreads peanut butter thick over a slice of bread. And when Richie notices him, he smiles so fucking wide, eyes lighting up, and says, “Hey there, Sleeping Beauty. About time you woke up, I knocked like everything off your bathroom counter an hour ago and you didn’t make a peep. Couldn’t believe it.”

Eddie can’t believe it either. He’s a fucking werewolf—he can hear better than anyone, can hear someone breaking into a car down the street. He wakes up from Martin jumping on the counter sometimes. He’s hardwired to be jumpy and paranoid. There was a strange man in his house, invading his _territory,_ and he still felt so deeply safe that he just fucking. Slept through it. 

“Yeah,” he says, and knows he’s fucking doomed. 

They go to the Botanical Gardens that first day, because it’s free on Saturday mornings and Richie forgets he’s rich sometimes, apparently. They get lunch in Manhattan and then take the Ferry to Staten Island, because Richie says he’s never been. They go back to Eddie’s place and Richie makes them dinner and he’s actually _good at it,_ he looks so happy and at-home in Eddie’s kitchen, using a wooden spoon as a microphone as he sings along to the radio at Eddie when he walks past, picking Martin up to put him on the counter so he can watch Richie chop vegetables, brightening up Eddie’s dull, meaningless life like he’s the fucking sun. And when he asks Eddie if he can stay another night or if he should get a hotel room, of course Eddie fucking tells him to stay. 

Of course he does. 

The second day is harder, in that he wakes up from a dead sleep to Richie throwing a balled-up shirt directly into his face, and it’s such a shock to his system, snapping out of a dream about running through the woods on four legs and then immediately being hit in the face with something that smells so powerfully of Richie, that he can physically feel the human part of his brain just shut the fuck down. He gets a lung-full of Richie’s scent, viscerally familiar and kind of disgustingly alluring, and suddenly the wolf is rearing its mighty fucking head while the rest of him is still mostly asleep. He doesn’t move. He inhales deeply, all of the hair on his body standing up. He opens his mouth, and feels the fabric of Richie’s shirt drag across his lips. He can practically taste him. If Eddie could sprout fur and claws right now, he would. It’s still six days to the full moon. His bones ache to shift. His teeth itch with how badly they want to elongate into fangs. He feels, in that moment, feral. 

He gets a grip after what feels like a full minute, but could only have been ten seconds. He unclenches his fingers from his sheet and takes one last deep, steadying breath before he drags the shirt off his face. A wild, animal part of him wants, disturbingly, to stuff it into his mouth. He swallows down a sound that definitely wouldn’t have been human. 

Richie is looking at him sheepishly from the doorway. “Sorry, Spaghetti Man,” he says. “Just wanted to ask how to use your laundry machine. You sleep like the dead, dude.”

Eddie wants to snap that he’s fucking tired, that his body is burning through an insane amount of energy in preparation for the full moon at the end of the week, that he sleeps like the dead because for once he feels like he is sharing a space with someone he trusts inherently and it means he can finally, finally relax. But quite frankly, human speech is beyond Eddie right now, and his brain is still mostly consumed with thoughts of _pack,_ and _safe,_ and _mine._ God, he is so fucked. 

Instead, he hauls his ass out of bed, wordlessly takes Richie’s shirt to toss it into the laundry machine in the bathroom, gestures for Richie to get the rest. Lets Richie think he’s pissed about being woken up, just so that he doesn’t have to talk. Just so that he can grip the edge of the washer and hang his head and take a moment to drag his humanity up from the depths of his soul. When Richie comes back with the clothes he wants washed, Eddie gets another good whiff of them and almost regresses again, but he manages to keep his wits about him, say, “Cold or hot?”

“I dunno, whatever,” Richie says. “Does it make a difference?”

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, as if he didn’t just learn how to do his own laundry eight months ago from a YouTube video. 

Richie grins. “Can we go to a museum today? I’ll pay for you.”

Eddie shrugs, and needs to get out of the fucking bathroom before he shoves his face into Richie’s armpit or something. “Yeah, sure. Whatever you want, it’s your vacation.”

“I’m here to visit you,” Richie says. “I want to do what you want to do.”

Eddie breathes through his mouth and says, “I’m good with anything,” before beating a hasty retreat. He should know, at that point, that he’d be better off just staying home. He should know. 

He does know, but he doesn’t listen, because Richie makes him a fucking moron, clearly. They go to the museum after lunch, and Eddie can’t shake his fucking...lupine brain, or whatever. He’s verbal, at least, but he can’t seem to lower his proverbial hackles. He’s on high alert all day, in a space full of strangers, in unfamiliar territory. Usually, even a week before full moon, something like this wouldn’t really bother him. He doesn’t typically get this on edge, and this _wolfish,_ until maybe the day or two before. But that little episode this morning triggered every single one of his more embarrassing instincts, and it’s going to take a hard reset to get things under control—meaning, most likely, he’s going to have to kick Richie out so he can take a nap later. 

But later isn’t _right now,_ and _right now_ Eddie is desperately swallowing down the urge to rub up against Richie in front of the fucking taxidermied animals of the American Museum of Natural History. He is trying to make it less obvious that he’s inhaling too deeply whenever he’s anywhere even close to Richie, and he’s chewing furiously on gum because his teeth are itching to gnaw on something, and he’s sitting too fucking close to Richie on the bench outside the dinosaur fossils exhibit but he’s not sitting in his fucking lap and that’s all he can _fucking_ ask of himself right now, okay? He’s going to lose his mind. 

Richie, for his part, either doesn’t notice or does a good job playing stupid, chattering endlessly about stuff he’s reading on exhibit signs and something his eleventh grade science teacher said to him and this thing he just googled about giant squids. 

Everyone has a limit, though, and they both reach theirs at the exact same time. 

It is, of course, a series of events that finally pushes Eddie over the edge. The museum is a whole mess, but he has things under control. It’s after they leave that Eddie starts really losing it. They get stuck in a throng of pedestrians, first, when crossing a busy street. Eddie loses Richie for a second, and the smell of the city—of car exhaust and sewage and body odour and the McDonalds down the street—is so thick in his nose that he can’t even catch a whiff of him. It gets his hackles up, and his brain goes dark and chaotic for a moment, panicked. He fights through the crowd, agitated, until he pushes through to the other side and finds Richie again, who’s only barely looking around for him. Eddie grabs at the edge of his shirt, attaches himself to Richie’s side, and says, “God _damn_ I hate New York.”

“You don’t _have_ to live here,” Richie laughs. 

Eddie ignores him. He’s busy trying to get his breathing back under control. He has no _reason_ to be so fucking protective. Richie’s a grown-ass adult, and he can take care of himself. But he’s human, and humans, Eddie knows, are almost obnoxiously vulnerable. Eddie can’t help but want to keep him safe.

So now he’s already on high alert, and a minute later Richie stumbles on the uneven sidewalk, and Eddie comes _this fucking close_ to fucking...snapping at the sidewalk for daring to trip him up. And when they walk past a young lady walking three dogs, they all stop to sniff at Richie’s shoes, and Eddie has to smack a hand over his mouth to stop himself from growling at them, and Richie gives him a weird look. 

And it’s barely a minute after that that some girl stops on the sidewalk in front of them and lifts her phone to take a picture, obviously recognizing Richie and not even bothering to _ask_ , and Eddie fucking _barks at her._ He just. He opens his mouth, intending to cuss her out or maybe just say something mildly rude, and what comes out is a _bark._

Richie stops dead. Eddie stops dead. The girl looks, more than anything, like she thinks Eddie might be insane. Eddie might agree. 

“What,” Richie says. 

“Fuck off,” Eddie says, both to the girl and to Richie. 

She raises her eyebrows at them and walks quickly past, like she needs to go tweet about this fucking moron she saw with Richie Tozier. 

Richie laughs a little, a confused sound. “What the fuck, Eddie, what was _that?”_

“She was pissing me off,” Eddie says, starting to walk again, not even sure where he’s going. 

“But what was that _noise?_ Also, people take pictures of me all the time. Like, on a regular basis. It’s not a huge deal.”

“They should respect your fucking privacy,” Eddie says, ignoring his question and feeling his face go hot. “I need coffee.”

“No kidding, Grumpy Pants. You gotta do something about that caffeine addiction, man, I thought you were going to bite someone’s head off.”

Eddie winces, and makes Richie wait for his coffee at the closest cafe while he stands gripping the sink in the single-stall bathroom, splashing water on his face and struggling to get a grip. He can’t _be like this._ He can’t be so obvious. He can’t be...this. Obviously, Richie’s first thought isn’t going to be _werewolf,_ but it’s not like monsters are something outside of their realm of belief. And he can’t let Richie think that’s what he is. He can’t...let Richie _know_ that’s what he is. 

He expects Richie to press him about it when he returns from the bathroom, to demand answers, to make all of Eddie’s nightmares come true, but instead, when Eddie comes out, Richie hands him his massive coffee and then ruffles Eddie’s hair, grinning. 

“Don’t mean to alarm you, Spaghetti Head, but I think your hair’s escaped its pomade prison,” he says. “Also, if you die from caffeine overdose from drinking that, I refuse to be held accountable. I tasted it and almost had an instant heart attack.”

Eddie smacks his hand away, and hates the way something in him settles instantly from Richie essentially petting his head. “Go fuck yourself.”

Richie laughs like he’s delighted. “Feeling better after sticking your head under the faucet?”

“I was until you opened your mouth.” He takes a loud sip of his coffee. Eddie _does_ have a bit of a caffeine addiction, but mostly he needs it the week before the full moon just to stay awake. The constant adrenaline rushes are draining as fuck. 

In all honesty, Eddie feels like Richie is probably just about done with him for the day. It should have been Eddie’s intent to get Richie to leave him alone for a while, should have been his goal to get Richie so sick of him that he’d need some time away, but it honestly wasn’t. He wasn’t even _trying_ to be unbearable—he just _is,_ he’s just. Too much, sometimes, and he knows that. He thinks Richie must be gearing up to make an excuse to go out on his own for the rest of the day, or maybe head back to California. 

But instead, when Richie opens his mouth, it’s not to say he has plans that don’t include Eddie. He just. He tips his head to the side and says, completely out of nowhere, “Hey. Thanks for like...caring about that kind of stuff.”

“Huh?” Eddie says, completely taken aback. 

“That girl on the street, and the pictures and stuff. I mean, I know you probably also didn’t want _your_ picture taken and shit, but like. I dunno, sometimes I get too tired to care about it. So. Thanks.” And then, “I can hire you full-time, if you want. Richie Tozier’s personal guard dog.”

The dog reference stings, even if it’s not on purpose, but Eddie still finds himself hanging his head and shuffling his feet at the open gratitude. “Of course I fucking care, Rich. It’s your life.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, a little too soft. “You’ve always been pretty good about wanting me to live.”

Eddie sniffs, and tries not to think about the Deadlights, about It’s cavernous mouth lined with rows of teeth, about the fence post in Eddie’s hand. He clears his throat. “So are we done here or what? I kind of want to go home, my head is pounding.”

He still thinks Richie is going to want to stay out, see the city, get some time away. But of course, Richie always has to surprise him. “Sure, dude. I mean, I’m telling you, caffeine addiction, you gotta get that under control. But yeah, let’s go home. Martin probably misses me.”

Eddie has to swallow hard at the way Richie says _home._ He knows it’s reflexive—that any place you’re staying at even temporarily becomes _home_ —but it still hurts a little. Knowing that for right now, Eddie’s apartment is Richie’s home. And that he’s going to leave. Eddie needs him to leave. 

And as always, Eddie wants him to stay. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for some graphic imagery in this chapter! make sure you've read the tags <3 be safe ily

Eddie wants to take a nap when they get home from their outing, which Richie thinks might be an excuse that translates to _I need some alone time and you are so loud all the time,_ but happily agrees to regardless. He makes himself comfortable on the couch, not bothering to pull it out into a bed (which does, indeed, inexplicably smell like dog) and gets out his laptop to check his emails, approve some interview questions, post some annoying pictures of Eddie and himself at the museum today to the group chat. He texts with Bev for a few minutes, updates her on how Eddie’s been, tries to reassure himself at the same time as her. 

_He seems pretty normal, I think?_ he types out slowly, not sure what counts as gossip when it’s your mutual best friend and you’re both worried about him. _He hasn’t told me to go home yet, at least, and he seems...mostly happy. He doesn’t talk about himself much._

 **Bev**  
_Have you asked him about himself?_

 **Richie**  
_Of course I have! He just doesn’t say much_ _Sometimes I feel like maybe he doesn’t trust me. Or not enough to be honest with me._

 **Bev**  
_He risked his life for you, Rich. Eight months ago._

 **Richie**  
_Doesn’t mean he trusts me._

 **Bev**  
_Try prying. Just a little 🤏_

Richie huffs a laugh, which is immediately cut short by his laptop abruptly being covered by a fat, pink body. Richie jumps as Martin tells Bev, succinctly, _/GFTTTT98[’##]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]][ [[[[59rto]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]]ri=-l,kmy7u./;mn51],_ and then lies down on top of his keyboard. 

“Oh,” Richie says, blinking surprised eyes. “Okay.”

He rests his hand gently on Martin’s rump, like Eddie did on the couch that first night. Martin doesn’t make a sound, sprawling out across his laptop, sending Bev a very meaningful message consisting of about 78 P’s.

“Excuse me,” Richie says. “Sorry, just. Here, let me—” He tries to slide his laptop out from under the cat’s large, wrinkly body, but only succeeds in making him grumble angrily. “Sorry,” Richie says again. “But in my defense I didn’t ask for this.”

It takes him a full minute to wiggle his laptop free and set it aside, and then pick up his phone and reassure Bev he’s not having a stroke. Martin does not move from his lap. In fact, he seems to be getting increasingly comfortable between Richie’s thighs, curling himself into a nice little pink meatloaf, and no matter how Richie pokes and prods at him, he appears perfectly content. Which doesn’t make sense, considering Eddie couldn’t even _pet him._

Against all odds, as Richie slides down the couch to settle in as an apparent cat warmer, Martin not only stays firmly on top of him, but he starts pushing his wrinkly little face into Richie’s shirt, and pressing his pointy claws into his stomach, and starts _purring._ Richie didn’t even think this little goblin _could_ purr, especially not from the way Eddie talks about him as the grouchiest motherfucker to ever live. 

But here he is, shifting to curl up on Richie’s chest as Richie fucks around on his phone, meowing until Richie puts one hand back on his rump, and then squirming and rolling around on Richie’s chest until he starts _petting him._ He wants Richie to _pet him,_ and it’s baffling, because Richie has never exactly been a cat guy—has not owned a pet since the fourth fish he accidentally let die—but this cat seems to be soaking up vibes like it’s his job. And Richie’s not one to go against the will of an animal currently digging its razor-sharp claws into his chest through his shirt, so he just lies there, and plays twelve rounds of Solitaire, and pets Martin’s smooth, warm back. 

“You know,” he tells Martin’s snoozing face, “I think maybe you’re kind of cute. Like you absolutely do look like some sort of horrible gremlin, but the more I look at you the more you look like a _cute_ little gremlin. A cute, fat little demon monster. And you know what? Your skin is pretty soft, monster boy. Do you moisturize? I bet you moisturize.” He considers this, then opens google. 

Three minutes later, Eddie’s bedroom door opens, and he steps out, looking rumpled and soft and lovely in his huge shirt and little sleep shorts, and says, “Oh _fuck_ you.”

Richie laughs, and Martin grumbles at the noise. “He likes me!”

“You’re both so fucking obnoxious,” Eddie complains, and all but stomps into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of water. 

“Are you sure you didn’t do something horrible to him at some point?” Richie calls over. “Because I literally didn’t even have to do anything for him to get cozy with me.”

“I didn’t do anything!” Eddie insists, running a hand through his wild bedhair, which Richie has fallen in love with these past two days. “He just fucking hates me. God, this pisses me off.”

“I thought you hated _him,”_ Richie says, grinning. 

“I do! But I still want him to fucking like me! What an _asshole.”_ Eddie returns to the living room to look at them curled up on the couch together, and a complicated emotion flits across his face briefly before he settles on annoyance. “Man, fuck you both.”

Richie laughs, stroking down Martin’s bony spine as he purrs. “I feel like I remember you always having a tense relationship with cats?”

Eddie actually bares his teeth a little, which is hilarious. “All cats hate me.”

“You were always trying to befriend the neighbourhood strays, though,” Richie says thoughtfully. “Why _did_ they always hate you? It made you so mad.”

“Fucking stupid,” Eddie mutters. “I eventually just gave up.”

Richie can’t help but laugh. “I distinctly remember you like...crouched at the side of a ditch with fucking bologna in your hand and a cat in there just being like, _fuck you._ It was so weird. You were so little, what were they afraid of? It’s like they were just instinctively scared of you.”

Eddie clenches his jaw, and his throat bobs. He looks hard at Martin, who seems very happy on top of Richie. He stays quiet. He looks tired. 

“Hey,” Richie says, a little too loudly. “Did you know you have to give hairless cats _baths?”_

“Of course I fucking know that, I have to give him a bath once a week,” Eddie snaps. “His bath day is tomorrow.”

Richie grins at the mental image. “I guess I have to stay for _that,_ then. I mean, I can’t miss it.”

Eddie frowns, unimpressed. But he doesn’t disagree. 

Which means Richie’s still there the next day, and gets to see Eddie get ready for work in the morning and transform from this soft, tired, messy-haired man into the neat, severe businessman Richie thought Adult Eddie was, and then eight hours later he gets to see Eddie come home and shed those layers again. He gets to watch Eddie disappear into the shower and come out with his previously slicked-back hair now soft and curling, dressed down in a t-shirt and shorts, skin pink and warm.

And then he gets to watch Eddie drag Martin into the bathroom, yowling and upset, and give him the gentlest, most soothing bath known to man while arguing with his cat in low tones, mouth foul and hands careful. Richie gets to watch his shorts ride up, exposing the huge white scars on his thigh where he was bitten by a dog before Richie ever knew him, and that Richie used to poke at just as an excuse to touch him. Eddie’s white shirt gets increasingly wet as Martin tries desperately to escape the bath, and Richie stands in the doorway and looks at him more than he should, picks out the dark lines that show through the translucent material. 

“Whoa, what’s _this?”_ he says, yanking down the loose collar at the back of his shirt to reveal a flash of colour, the delicate shape of what appears to be a purple flower, the edge of a perfect circle behind it, right there across the top of his spine. 

Eddie whips around fast, driving his elbow into Richie’s hip probably harder than he intends to. “Fuck off,” he snaps. 

“Ow,” Richie says, more surprised than hurt.

Martin leaps out of the tub and makes a run for it. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie sighs, getting up to go find him. 

“You have a tattoo?” Richie says, following behind. 

“It’s none of your fucking business,” Eddie says shortly. 

“Aw, come on, Eds. I’m sorry I made you lose your cat, I didn’t expect you to try to karate chop me.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and goes to dig Martin out from behind his bed. 

“I’m serious, Spaghetti Man, _when_ did you get a tattoo? Was it a post-divorce midlife crisis thing? Because like, I totally understand if it is.”

“It’s old,” Eddie says, voice tight. “College. Now fuck off and let me wash my cat.”

Richie decides maybe prying is not the best idea after all, and backs off. “Alright, okay. I was just curious. Forgive me for wanting to know things about you.”

Eddie shoots him a look that says, very plainly, _not forgiven._

Yeah, okay. Not prying. 

Richie pretends it doesn’t hurt. 

And it hurts less by the next day, when Eddie is home from work and they’re watching a movie again and it’s getting late and even if Eddie hasn’t told Richie anything about himself or how he’s doing, he also hasn’t told Richie to go home and never talk to him again. And Richie is sitting up against the armrest with Martin purring in his lap, and Eddie is lying curled on the other side of the couch, his bare feet pressed into Richie’s thigh, watching the TV with heavy, hooded eyes. He’s in a t-shirt and shorts again—seems to perpetually be in clothes better-suited for the summer—and Richie once again has a clear view of that scar on his thigh. It’s a huge thing, must have stretched as he grew to be as big as it is. It’s honestly kind of awesome, a curved row of raised bumps, with bigger, deeper, elongated scars on either side where canines must have sunk in and pulled. Richie wants to reach out and touch them. But he keeps his hands to himself. 

Richie pretends not to watch him, and Eddie seems to buy it, because he’s un-self-conscious as his eyes move away from the TV, to a heap of clothes next to Richie’s duffel bag. He didn’t bring a lot of clothes—didn’t know how long he would stay—so at all times he has his recently-washed clothes in his bag and the worn-but-still-mostly-clean clothes in a pile next to it. Eddie is eyeing it up now, and Richie thinks he’s probably going to tell Richie to do some laundry until Eddie reaches out, snags something, and pulls a hoodie from the pile. 

Richie didn’t exactly bring a lot of weather-appropriate clothing. It’s hot as hell in LA, and he’s bad at remembering what spring weather feels like in northern states. He only brought one sweater, and he’s been wearing it on and off whenever he goes out underneath his too-thin jacket to stave off the cold April air. It’s definitely not fresh, is what he’s saying, but Eddie doesn’t seem to notice as he holds it up for a second, and then starts pulling it on over his head without a word. 

“Uh,” Richie says, and he doesn’t really know why. 

“Mm.” Eddie’s voice is muffled as he squirms into the sweater without getting up. He jams his elbow into the back of the couch, kicks Richie in the thigh. His head pops through the neckhole. 

Richie blinks at him. “You, uh. Comfortable?”

Eddie glances at him, and then away. “M’cold.”

“Okay,” Richie says, and tries to look away. 

He absolutely fails. Eddie used to do this a lot, when they were kids. Stole Richie’s sweaters in the colder months in Maine, pulled them on without asking. Always said he was cold, but never thought to just dress more warmly himself. Richie had the same reaction then as he does now, the inability to tear his eyes away from Eddie drowning in his clothes, looking so warm and comfortable. The urge to reach out and touch him is almost unbearable, to slide his hands up under the hem of his sweater, to touch him there, the soft, secret spots of him. Richie hasn’t seen Eddie shirtless since they were kids in the Quarry, but he can imagine it, the smooth, flat planes of his stomach, the dusting of hair that might be there, the dip of his sternum. 

As a rule, Richie tries not to let himself linger on thoughts like this, feels gross and predatory, like he’s violating Eddie just by thinking about it, dirtying their friendship. But it’s late, and he’s tired, and he can imagine, so vividly, the way he would crawl over Eddie’s curved body, push his hands up under his sweater, the way he might hold Eddie, shamelessly, if things were different. God, if only things were different. 

Eddie pulls the neck of the sweater up over his mouth and nose, and his eyes flick to Richie quickly, before Richie can look away. “What?”

Richie has to swallow twice before he can speak. His hand settles on Eddie’s ankle at his hip without his permission. “Nothing,” he says. 

“You’re looking at me.”

Richie nods. He can’t seem to look away. The movie goes quiet—Richie has no idea what’s even happening. He opens his mouth, and some truth spills out. “I miss you.”

“Huh?” Eddie looks at him again, incredulous. The neck of the sweater drops again. His hair is messy; his frown makes his dimples pop in his cheeks. He’s so fucking handsome, god, Richie wants him so fucking badly sometimes. He wants him all the time, and getting to have him, even just like this, is going to make it so much worse when Richie has to go home. 

He breathes in deep. “I miss you,” he says again. 

Eddie’s brow pinches. “I’m right here.”

“I know,” Richie says, and manages a smile. His fingers curl around Eddie’s ankle. “I miss knowing you.”

Eddie watches him for a moment, quiet. His hands clench in the front of his sweater. He says, more honest than Richie thinks he’s ever been, “You’ve never known me.”

It feels a little like a kick to the stomach. Richie’s throat goes thick. “You’re my best friend.”

Eddie doesn’t argue that—Richie appreciates it. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Richie says. Doesn’t even have to think about it. 

“That’s impossible,” Eddie says. “I don’t know everything about _you.”_

It’s true. Eddie will never know all of him. Richie supposes they all have their secrets. “I miss knowing who you are,” he says. “I didn’t see you for over twenty years, Eds. I was excited to meet you again. I want to know who you are.”

Eddie doesn’t say anything for a minute. His toes dig into Richie’s thigh. He rubs the hem of Richie’s sweater between his fingers. He says, “You wouldn’t like who I am.”

“Why?”

Eddie shakes his head. “Because I don’t.”

Richie’s eyes feel hot. He holds onto Eddie’s ankle tighter, and Eddie doesn’t pull away. “Eddie,” he says. “Do you trust me?”

Eddie breathes in, then out. “With my life,” he says. But the way he says it makes it sound like that’s not the superlative people usually mean it to be. _I trust you with my life, but nothing beyond that._

Still, Richie nods. He says, “I wish you’d let me see you.”

Eddie makes a sound like a laugh, quick and harsh. Richie thinks he must think Richie’s joking, or stupid. But he just says, “You’re here, aren’t you?”

And he is. Richie’s here, in Eddie’s house, in his space. Looking at him. And he’s grateful. He’s so happy to be here. “Yeah,” he says. 

Eddie nods, and turns back to the TV, as if either of them are still watching the movie. Richie’s heart beats out of time in his chest as he watches the way the lights of the screen flicker across his face. 

“Hey,” Richie says. “I trust you, too. With my life.”

Eddie huffs, and his lips move. Richie can’t hear him, but it looks kind of like he says, _you shouldn’t._

“Eds?”

Eddie sighs. “Yeah,” he says, and pushes his foot into Richie’s lap, where Martin is curled and snoozing. His eyes look suspiciously shiny, but it might just be the lighting. “Thanks, Rich.”

And really, Richie doesn’t feel like he’s gotten anywhere. He didn’t get anything out of Eddie, apart from...a baffling self-loathing, an unwillingness to say any of the hundreds of things Richie can see swirling behind his eyes. But he’s still here. He’s here, with Eddie, who still wears his sweaters and still touches Richie like he likes him. And at the end of the night, Eddie still gets up and walks off with Richie’s clothes, just like he used to. He’s still Eddie, even if he doesn’t want Richie to see him. And Richie _did_ know him as kids. He knew him, because he spent time with him, day after day, year after year. Because he looked long and hard. 

He figures it won’t be hard to just keep doing more of the same. 

🌕

Imagine this. 

You are six years old when your mother stops touching you freely. You are six years old, and suddenly the people you trust the most don’t trust you. You are six years old, and suddenly every space you occupy becomes a minefield. _Home_ becomes not a place where you are safe, but a place where you are kept so that others are safe from _you_. 

Imagine this. _Home_ takes on a new meaning. When it’s not a prison, it’s a hospital room. Home is not your school, because even though you make friends there, there are just as many people who laugh at you, push you around, and they don’t even _know_ your secrets. Home is not Richie Tozier’s house, or Bill Denbrough’s house, where you can only stay for as long as you are well-behaved. Home is not the Barrens, either, even though on full moons it’s where you long to be. The woods are cold and damp, and they only welcome you when you are not fully human.

Home is not your new city, your new school. Home is not the house you live in with your mother because you cannot afford to live alone, and you cannot afford to have a roommate. Home is not the house you buy with the only person who will ever want you. Home is not the basement where you change every month where there is no window through which to feel the light of the full moon. 

Imagine this. You are forty years old and you have never had a home. You are living alone for the first time in your life. You are trying to build something that feels like a space that welcomes you rather than cages you, but you don’t know how. 

Imagine this. You come home from work, and there is someone there. He’s your best friend, and he’s here because he wants to see you. Because he wants to know you. He is making supper for the two of you, familiar already with your kitchen. He sees you come in, and he looks up, and he smiles. He smells good—he smells so good. He smells, impossibly, like _home._

Eddie’s nostrils flare. Richie smells good, but he also smells like _outside._ Like people Eddie doesn’t know. 

“Hey,” Richie says. “I’m making something that resembles quesadillas. I couldn’t remember what you are and aren’t actually truly allergic to, so I’m just making shit up using ingredients I found in your house.”

Eddie licks his lips, and toes off his shoes to walk closer to him. He smells like asphalt, and rain, and perfume. Eddie’s curling a hand around the back of Richie’s neck before he can stop himself, before he can think about whether or not it’s strange. “Where’d you go today?”

Richie blinks in surprise, and Eddie panics for a second that his touch is off-putting, or that he sounded off, that he sounded controlling or something. But Richie just says, “How’d you know I went anywhere?”

Eddie laughs to give himself time, pulls his hand away from Richie’s neck but finds it magnetically drawn to the small of his back, his waist. He tells himself it’s enough that he isn’t rubbing his entire body over Richie’s to erase the smell of strangers inside his home. “Your shoes were wet,” he says finally, after a pause that’s uncomfortably long. “Were you out in the rain?”

Richie hums, leans away from a splatter of hot oil, back against Eddie’s touch. He doesn’t seem to notice it after all, or if he does, he doesn’t seem inclined to point it out. “Yeah, just a bit. I was just out wandering. It was cold as shit, man, it’s miserable out there. New York in April is so shit. I got Martin a hot water bottle, actually, he looked kinda cranky. Look, he’s been sitting on it all day.” He jerks his head in the direction of the living room. 

Eddie glances over to where Martin is curled on top of a knitted hot water bottle cover. He frowns. “He already has one. You’re spoiling him, Rich.”

Richie snorts. “He has an electric blanket in his bed, Eddie. I think he’s already spoiled.”

Eddie sniffs. “Maybe he came with the bed.”

Richie sends him a look, warm and indulgent. “Did he?”

“Well. No.” Eddie sweeps his hand up Richie’s back, and finally feels satisfied with the way he smells more like Eddie than some stranger he bumped into on the sidewalk and steps away. Richie makes a small sound, and Eddie tells himself it must be from something unrelated. “They literally gave him to me in a box. He needed stuff! What was I supposed to do, just let him suffer and be cold until they come back?”

“You said your neighbours dumped him on you?” Richie says. “How did that even happen?”

Eddie makes a face, moving to clear off the table and get it set for dinner. “They just showed up and were like, _hey, we’re going away for a little while, can you take our cat?”_

“And you said yes?”

“I said _no,”_ Eddie insists. “I said I was allergic.”

Richie laughs. “Are you?”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “No. Cats just hate me.”

“As we’ve established,” Richie says, grinning. “So?”

“So, they said, _oh, that’s fine, he’s hairless!_ And then they whipped out this cat in a cardboard box and said thanks and left.”

Richie shakes his head disbelievingly, still laughing. “And how long ago was that?”

Eddie sighs, disgruntled. “Like. Two months ago. So I’m sure they’re coming back for him any day now.”

“Eddie, baby,” Richie says, and the pet name goes through Eddie like lightning, even though he _knows,_ he fucking _knows_ it’s just to be obnoxious. 

“Huh?” he says belatedly, realizing he missed whatever Richie said after that. 

“I said _they’re not coming back,”_ Richie says, eyebrows inching up his forehead. 

“Oh. Yeah. I mean, yes they will. Probably.”

A smile tugs at Richie’s mouth, pulling it crooked. “Are you just saying that so you won’t get attached?”

Eddie scoffs, already distracted again by Richie’s hands turning off the stove, moving to rummage around in the drawer next to the oven for a pot holder, pulling it out like he’s lived here for years instead of a couple days. Like he belongs here. 

Imagine this: you are forty-one years old and fresh off a divorce and a life-threatening injury and you’re a werewolf and you discover that _home_ is a person, and he always has been.

“I’m gonna go change,” Eddie says abruptly, turning away, towards his bedroom. 

“Oh,” Richie says. “Okay. Dinner will be ready in like ten minutes, tops.”

“Yeah. If I fall asleep, just. Stick mine in the fridge for me. Sorry.”

“Hey, no worries. I get it.” Richie grins, sunny as always. 

Eddie swallows hard and walks to his room, away from the urge to bury his face in Richie’s neck, breathe him in, the smell of him, the smell of _them._

And then he climbs into bed, and is hit with a wall of the same scent he was trying to avoid, because every fucking morning Eddie seems to wake up with another of Richie’s shirts in his bed, pilfered when he was too tired and too primally desperate for comfort to realize he was doing it. And that’s the _problem—_ Eddie wants that comfort. Like Martin, he seeks it out constantly. And Richie’s clothes, Richie’s scent, settles him like nothing else. He’s fucking _nest-building,_ he’s...denmaking. With Richie’s clothes. 

He throws a t-shirt to the floor in disgust, sick with himself, and then quietly picks it back up and changes out of his work shirt and into Richie’s, because he’s weak. He’s so weak. And he knows he needs to do something about that, but he _can’t._ He just...wants to go home. 

There’s a specific feeling attached to that. Wanting to go home. Eddie thinks everyone must know it. When you’ve been on vacation a little too long, when you’ve been away at school all semester, when you’ve had a long day at work. You just want to go home. That longing for comfort, for familiarity, for rest. Longing not for a specific place, but for a feeling. Eddie thinks he’s felt it his entire life. 

He wants to go home. 

He feels it so strongly the next day, when his meeting at work runs late and he gets stuck in the worst of New York rush hour traffic and he’s so fucking tired and every motorist in New York is pissing him off and all he wants is to go home. He wants it so bad. 

And then he gets home—he gets to his apartment—and he opens the door and Martin is sitting on the table looking at him like he’s accusing him of something and Eddie knows, immediately, that Richie isn’t here. He’s not sure what it is, if he can smell Richie’s absence or hear that it’s too quiet or just sense it somehow, so close now to the full moon, so close that the wolf is practically bursting out of him at all times. All he knows is that he _knows,_ but that doesn’t stop him from launching into a frenzy, tearing through every room of his little apartment, calling Richie’s name, panicked and confused. He yanks back the shower curtain in the bathroom, like Richie might be hiding from him—pulls his front door open to step into the hallway and sniff the air for him, and he can’t smell him, like the evidence of him has been wiped away. 

Eddie’s heart pounds against his ribs, already shot through with adrenaline from his impending shift. Panic claws at his throat. And it’s not even just that he’s worried about Richie being gone. He’s overprotective at this time of the month, on edge at the best of times, even more paranoid than he usually is. But that’s not even all. He’s— He’s anxious because he doesn’t know where Richie is, but on top of that is a mixture of alarm that he’s gotten used to Richie being here at all, and fear of what that _means_ for Eddie. 

Eddie paces around his tiny apartment, hands in his hair, pulse thudding in his throat. “Fuck me,” he mutters, nearly tripping over Martin weaving between his legs. _“Fuck.”_

 _He left,_ he brain tells him, cruelly. _He just fucking left._

And then, _I should be glad he left._

He should be glad, because clearly he’s in no fucking state to be anywhere near Richie right now, has never been worthy of being close to him and has only made that obvious by how manic Richie being gone has made him. Not only is Eddie a fucking _monster,_ but he’s also obsessed, over-attached, fucking...bordering on codependent. And he knows it’s all made worse by the fact that the full moon is fucking _tomorrow_ and his body is flooded with hormones and primal instincts in excess right now, but the fact of the matter is that’s _him._ That’s what he does. He’s a fucking werewolf, and this is going to happen every single month for the rest of his life, every month he’s going to turn into this horrible person who needs Richie so fucking bad, who freaks out when he’s gone and needs him to stay. 

That’s probably _why_ Richie left. Because Eddie is too much, because he’s barely recognizable when he’s like this, because Richie’s uncomfortable. He probably hates Eddie. 

Eddie needs Richie to hate him. Just a little. Just enough that he leaves. 

Eddie needed him to leave. But now that he’s gone, _god,_ Eddie wants him so fucking bad. 

That’s what Eddie’s mom used to always tell him, and when he moved out Myra took over. That he would always need someone. That he would always be too much for people, for anyone else, and that’s why he needed them, specifically. And Eddie hates that, always hated it, never wanted to believe it but always halfway did. When he left Myra he thought he’d be okay. He thought he knew she’d been lying, that he would be okay on his own, that he’d figure out how to get by. That he could figure out how to only have to rely on himself, never be a burden on anyone else. And he _had._ But god, it’s so hard right now. It’s so fucking hard. 

And then the door is opening again behind him, and Eddie’s head is such a mess that it takes him a minute to process what he’s seeing—Richie stepping in, Richie blinking at him, Richie opening his mouth and speaking. 

Eddie stares at him, and slowly, his words filter through the chaos in his skull to his brain. 

“You made it home before me!” Richie is saying, a little surprised, a little wary. He can probably see the wildness in Eddie’s eyes, the tension in his shoulders. Eddie wonders if his hands are sprouting claws. 

Eddie wonders if he’s scaring him. 

It takes him a minute to find his voice, and when he does, all he can say is, “I thought you left.”

“I did,” Richie says slowly. “I went to look at some boring tourist shit. Figured you wouldn’t want to tag along even if you weren’t working.”

Eddie shakes his head. Says, “I thought you went home.”

Richie barks out a laugh. “What, without even telling you? Just fucked off in the middle of the day?”

Eddie shrugs, doesn’t look at him. “Your things weren’t here.”

“I stuck them in the hall closet,” Richie says, blinking innocently. “I didn’t want Martin to piss on them while I was gone.”

“Oh.” Eddie doesn’t so much slump as he shrivels up, feeling disgusted with himself, pathetic and tired and miserable. He’s so fucking exhausted, and his head is a wreck, and now that Richie’s back, Eddie desperately needs him to go. He sighs, rubs his hands over his eyes. 

“Eds?” Richie says gently. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Hungry.”

“You’re always hungry these days,” Richie says with a small, uneasy laugh. 

Eddie shrugs. He _is._ He’s starving. It’ll be worse when he shifts, if he doesn’t gorge himself beforehand. As it turns out, breaking down and reconstructing your entire body burns a hell of a lot of calories. 

“We can order in?” Richie says. “On me.”

“You’re going home tomorrow?” Eddie says. 

“Oh.” Richie sniffs. “I guess. I could probably stay one more day, with my schedule, but.”

“You should go home tomorrow,” Eddie tells him. Short, abrupt. Like an asshole. He needs to be an asshole. Richie needs to go home tomorrow. 

“Oh,” Richie says again. “Okay.”

“You should book a flight,” Eddie says. “If you haven’t already.”

“Okay,” Richie says again. 

“I’ll order food.”

He turns away and walks to his room. Martin sits next to his bed and looks at him reproachfully. Eddie sighs, rubs his face, lies down. Richie’s t-shirt is still under his covers. 

God. What an absolute shitshow. 

🌕

So, it’s Richie’s last night with Eddie. He...hadn’t been expecting it, exactly. He thinks he’d said, probably, at some point, that he’d be leaving by Friday, or maybe he said Saturday, but Eddie clearly wants him gone. He was not at all shy about making it clear that he wants Richie gone. 

Richie wants to pretend it’s fine. That he’s happy he got to spend close to a week with Eddie, that he’s just glad he got the chance to get to know him a little, connect with him. He wants to pretend he’s happy with the time he got, that he’s satisfied. 

It doesn’t feel fine. Eddie was very clearly _not_ fine when Richie got home from being a tourist, and Richie has no idea what’s wrong. And he still doesn’t look good, stretched out across the couch with his feet tucked under Richie’s thigh, tense as a bowstring, pallid in the flickering light of the TV, breathing a little too shallow, a little too quick. It’s not that late yet—it’s not even dark—but Eddie looks exhausted. He looks _sick._

He always looks sick. And tired. And Richie knows that he got life-saving surgery after being skewered by a clown less than a year ago, and Richie obviously doesn’t know what that does to a person, but he just. He fucking worries, okay? He worries because he knows, he _knows_ Eddie’s mom and ex-wife convinced him he was sick in ways that he wasn’t, but he also knows Eddie could be _actually sick,_ and he worries that Eddie wouldn’t tell anyone if he were. That he would just hide it away, grit his teeth and bear it. Richie hasn’t seen any medication in his house. Eddie hasn’t been to the doctor or anything. Richie thought that was a good sign, a sign that he was getting better. Now he’s worried Eddie needs it after all. 

But what is he supposed to say? _Hey, Eddie, ever think about staying on those meds? Ever think about spending more time in the ER? Maybe you should try that again._

But fuck, he looks terrible. 

And still, Eddie is quiet. They eat in silence, watch TV in silence. Richie has never had so little to say. Or so little power to just say everything he wants to. He’s never really had much of a filter, or impulse control. But with Eddie, it’s different. With Eddie it’s always been different. 

So he doesn’t say anything. He’s had a lot of practice with not saying things to Eddie even though they’re always right there on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be let out. Instead, he sits there in silence, and he lets his hand settle on Eddie’s ankle, and he thinks, _Well, Richie Tozier. You’ve fucked up again. What else is new._

He considers changing his stage name. _Richie Fuck-Up Tozier._ He thinks, at least, his audience would agree. 

“Hey,” he says, breaking the silence for the first time all evening. His voice comes out thick. He pets Martin, curled in his lap, to soothe his nerves.

“What,” Eddie says, and it sounds like he’s speaking through gritted teeth. He pulled the curtains closed, earlier. It’s dim in the living room as dusk falls. It feels like it’s been a long day, even though up until he got home Richie was feeling fine. 

He swallows with difficulty. “I’m. I’m sorry if I’ve been, like. A nuisance, and shit. I know I just kind of...showed up unannounced, and then refused to leave you alone. You should have told me to leave earlier. I know I’m...a lot.”

Eddie is quiet for a moment, staring at the TV in the waning light, and cold dread settles in Richie’s stomach before he finally says, “No, Rich, that’s not it.”

Richie scoffs a little, and it makes Martin make a sound of displeasure. “Come on, Eds, you can tell me. I know I steamrolled you into letting me stay. I wish you would have told me earlier.”

“Rich,” Eddie says gently. “Come on. I...I liked having you here. I promise.” And then, “It’s just. Time for you to go home now.”

“Why?” Richie asks, maybe a little desperately. 

Eddie shakes his head. “You have to get back to living your life. And I have to get back to mine.”

“Have I been holding you back? Have I been, what, stopping you from doing shit? You could have just _told me,_ Eds, I—” He pauses, bites his tongue. “I wish you would just tell me things.”

And Eddie just shakes his head again. “It’s not that easy.”

“It _is,”_ Richie says stubbornly, like he’s thirteen again, and everything is simple. Eddie always makes him feel thirteen again. 

Eddie’s lips quirk up in the flickering TV light. There are lines on his face that Richie wishes he could smooth out with his thumb. He loves Eddie powerfully, fiercely. Loves Eddie in these quiet moments as much as in laughter and in a screaming rage. Loves him even when it couldn’t be more clear that it isn’t returned, will never be returned. 

It’s not like that ever stopped Richie from loving him before. 

“Eddie,” Richie says again, not even sure what he’s going to say, but Eddie holds up his hand to stop him. Richie’s mouth clicks shut, and he waits, but Eddie doesn’t say anything. He’s breathing a little too hard again. When Richie looks at him, his eyes are closed. Richie wonders, suddenly, if he’s having a panic attack. Or an asthma attack. Or. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know if he’s allowed to ask. “Eds?”

“Rich, just. Shut up for a second,” Eddie says, jaw stiff, forehead lined. Martin is grumbling in Richie’s lap, like he doesn’t appreciate Eddie’s tone. Richie wonders if Eddie’s pissed at him. If he’s just...reached the end of his rope. If Richie’s finally pushed him over the edge. Richie wonders, panic settling in his stomach, if he’s the one making Eddie sick. 

Eddie makes a sound, soft and pained, and Martin gets to his feet on Richie’s thighs, back arching as he growls. 

“Martin,” Richie scolds, stroking a hand along his smooth back. “What the fuck, man?”

“God,” Eddie mutters, and then shudders. 

“Dude,” Richie says, now seriously concerned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just. Shut up, don’t—” He stops, swallows thickly. His hands clench into fists. 

“Eddie, are you—” Richie starts to say, but before he can finish, Eddie twitches or spasms, and it spooks Martin bad enough that he tries climbing up Richie’s front. The sudden movement makes Eddie sit up abruptly, and Martin yowls and takes a wild swipe with his paw as he tries to scramble onto Richie’s shoulder. 

“Ow, _fuck,”_ Richie says as one claw catches his cheek. 

“Shit,” Eddie says, pushing Martin onto the back of the couch, where he bolts away. “Did he scratch you?”

Richie hisses, pressing the pad of his thumb into the scratch he can feel just under the rim of his glasses. “Yeah, a little.”

“Fuck, did he get your eye?”

Before Richie can say no, Eddie’s holding his face carefully between his warm hands, drawing him closer and tilting his face into the light of the TV, leaning in to assess the damage. Richie wants to tell him it’s nothing, that it’s probably not even bleeding and don’t get mad, but the words are stuck in his throat as Eddie’s concerned face fills his vision, eyebrows pinched, tired eyes searching. His thumb strokes over the scratch on Richie’s cheek. Richie can feel his breath fanning across his face. Something deep and wanting opens up in his chest. His throat bobs. 

“I think he missed you,” Eddie says softly, rubbing his thumb just under Richie’s eye. “Guess your bigass glasses act as safety goggles after...all…” He trails off, eyes meeting Richie’s, blinking slowly. Time seems to hesitate for a moment as Richie’s mouth goes dry. Eddie is so close to him, they’re practically breathing the same air. And his hands are so gentle on Richie’s face. And he’s still wearing Richie’s t-shirt. And he’s so lovely, and so good, and Richie wants him so bad. 

There’s a moment of stretched-out, endless, incredible possibility. Richie’s hand is on Eddie’s thigh and he has no idea when he put it there. Eddie exhales, Richie inhales. Something shivers up Richie’s spine. Wildly, he thinks, _what if this is it?_ The light from the TV catches Eddie’s eyes, and for a moment, they seem to glow like twin moons. 

Eddie jerks back, and Richie’s hand falls away from his thigh. Eddie swears under his breath, and looks at the window, and then down at his hands. _“Shit,”_ he says, and picks up his phone, opening something with hands that are visibly shaking. “Shit, _shit._ You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

“Eddie?” Richie says, nervous again, clammy from the moment snatched out from under his nose. 

_“Fuck!”_ Eddie says, voice rising. “Richie, you need to go. _Now.”_

“What?” Richie yelps. “Eddie, what’s wrong?”

It’s not just Eddie’s hands that are shaking. It’s his entire _body._ “You need to _go._ Right now. Get up and leave.”

“Eddie—” Richie says, but Eddie’s already standing, hauling Richie up by the arm. “Eds, I’m serious, what the fuck is your problem?”

“I don’t have a problem,” Eddie snaps. “Where’s your fucking bag? Put on your shoes.”

“I’m not fucking leaving until you tell me what’s wrong!”

Eddie snarls. “Get out of my _house,”_ he says. Martin is making a racket in another room. “Go. Get out. Right now.”

Fear shivers through Richie’s stomach. Maybe he’s figured it out, he thinks. Maybe whatever Richie thought he saw there in Eddie’s eyes—possibility—was just his own dumb hope reflecting back at him. Maybe it was so obvious that Eddie saw it, and he. He’s disgusted by it. He hates Richie for it. What else could be happening right now?”

“Wow,” he says, voice coming out shaky. “I didn’t realize that’s the kind of person you are.”

Eddie’s head snaps to him, his eyes searching, and then he laughs a little. “I don’t know what you think you—” He stops abruptly, looks at his phone again. Shivers violently. “Richie, _go._ I’m serious. Right now.” And then, to himself, “I can’t fucking _believe_ this.”

“Why can’t you just fucking tell me why you’re kicking me out at nine in the fucking evening!”

Eddie barks out a laugh. His eyes are bright, and glowing again. “I’ll pay for the hotel. Just, can you just— Could you leave? I don’t—” His breath catches. “I don’t want you here.”

It feels like he’s been punched in the gut. Richie swallows thickly. “Fine,” he says, shaking his head. “God, fuck. I’m _going.”_

“Thank you,” Eddie says, and it’s the first time he’s sounded more desperate than angry. 

Richie shoves his feet into his shoes. Eddie yanks his bag out of the hallway closet and pushes it into his hands. He opens the door to let Richie out. 

Richie hesitates at the threshold, making sure he has his phone, his wallet. He tries to meet Eddie’s gaze, but Eddie avoids him. “I wish… I wish you’d just tell me things,” he says. 

Eddie shivers. His eyes look wet. “Get out of my fucking house.”

Richie stumbles out. In a minute, he’s in the cold April night air. He feels more stunned than anything. He wonders if he just came out to someone for the first time. He wonders, dumbly, if Eddie knows. If Eddie hates him. 

He doesn’t know what fucking _happened._

He starts walking down the sidewalk, pulling out his phone to call a cab, feeling lost and upset and a little pissed off. It’s fucking _cold,_ and he probably left half of his stuff at Eddie’s. He hadn’t planned on packing everything until tomorrow morning. He thinks he left his charger by the couch. God, _fuck._

He unlocks his phone with clumsy fingers, and is immediately faced with his chat log with Bev. He’s been updating her all week about Eddie—without getting too into the details that might make Eddie kill him—and she’s been urging him, all week, to ask him more questions, to pry, to try to figure out what’s keeping him away. Not just out of curiosity, but out of _concern._ Because they’re all worried about him. Because they want to know what’s wrong. 

And Richie still has no idea. He’s leaving Eddie’s house after a _week,_ and he’s even more clueless than he was when he got there. At the beginning of all of this, Richie promised himself he wouldn’t let Eddie push them away anymore. But that’s exactly what he did, regardless of Eddie’s reasons. He’s not going to let that happen. He _can’t._ Not until he knows. 

He gets to the end of the street before he turns on his heel and starts walking back. _Fuck_ leaving him alone. Richie wants answers. Richie _deserves answers._ He’s not going to let Eddie just push away all his friends without knowing _why._ And if it’s just that Eddie can’t stand the idea that Richie’s gay, or into him specifically, well. Richie would like his worst fears confirmed in words before he lets himself believe it. 

He walks up to the door of Eddie’s apartment and takes a deep breath. He knows the code to get in—he needed it to come and go this past week. He knocks first, though, and doesn’t receive an answer. He knocks again, and hears something crash to the ground inside. He frowns, and says, “Eddie? If you don’t let me in I’m just going to walk in. You can’t just fucking ignore me, fuckwad.”

Nothing. Richie punches in the passcode. 

When he first steps inside, Eddie isn’t even in the room—Richie can hear him making noise in his bedroom. Richie frowns, drops his bag next to the door, steps further in. “Eddie?”

There’s a scramble of sound, and then Eddie stumbles out of his room, looking frazzled and wide-eyed. “What the fuck?” he says. 

Richie frowns and squares his shoulders. “I decided I wasn’t done talking,” he says stubbornly. 

“Richie,” Eddie says, and for the first time he sounds...scared. He sounds scared. “You have to leave. You can’t stay here.”

“Why?” Richie presses. “Why not? Why won’t you just tell me?”

Eddie starts shaking his head and doesn’t stop. “You have to go. Please, Richie, you need to listen to me. I need you to go.”

“I’m not going!” Richie insists. “Fuck, Eddie, can’t you just tell me what’s wrong?”

 _“No!”_ Eddie says, and it scares _Richie,_ how loud he’s getting. “I can’t, I just— I can’t tell you. I need you to leave. Please, Richie, I need you to leave.”

“Are you in trouble?” Richie asks. 

Eddie shakes his head again, but Richie doesn’t believe him, _can’t_ believe him when he looks so terrified. 

“You can’t keep pushing everyone away, Eds,” Richie says, taking another step towards him. “You have to let people _help you.”_

“No,” Eddie says, closing his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Please, Richie, please. I’ll never ask you for anything again if you just go and don’t come back.”

“I can’t do that,” Richie says, his voice edged with desperation. “Eddie, come on. I’m not going.”

Eddie’s hands spasm. His eyes are huge, pleading, scared. His hair is wild. He’s shaking. “Why can’t you just _go?_ Why can’t you just listen to me?”

“I can’t go without knowing you’ll be okay,” Richie says. 

Eddie takes a quavering breath, and tucks his hands under his arms. He doesn’t look at Richie as he says, “This is _my house,_ Richie. You can’t—you can’t stay here if I want you gone.”

Richie scoffs. “What, are you going to call the cops on me? For what, trespassing?”

“Yes!” Eddie snaps, rounding on him. “Yes, Richie, I fucking will! I’ll do whatever it fucking takes to get you to leave me alone! Get out of my fucking house!”

Richie blinks at him, shocked by his anger, his fury. His eyes are bright. Glowing. His face is red. He’s sweating bullets; his shirt is damp. Richie is trembling. “Eddie?” he says quietly. 

Eddie closes his eyes, and leans against the wall, and his chest heaves. He shakes his head violently, makes a sound like a choked sob, scratches at his neck, his chest. “God,” he chokes. “God, why today? Hasn’t happened in fucking _decades,_ just. So fucking—” He pries his eyes open with visible difficulty, looks straight at Richie. His eyes are bloodshot. There are scratch marks all up his neck and arms. “Please,” he says. “Please, Richie, please go. I’m begging you.”

Richie swallows hard. “Eddie, I don’t know what’s going on,” he says. “Why are you— Why won’t you tell me? Why are you keeping secrets from me?”

Eddie sobs and says, “You fucking idiot. If you knew you would _hate me.”_

Richie shakes his head, feeling like he’s underwater in the dark, lost and scared and muddled. His throat clicks. “I feel like that about myself sometimes.”

“You don’t get it!” Eddie snaps. “You don’t fucking get it, Richie, please leave, please just. I can’t handle this, I can’t, I. I don’t want you to be scared of me.” His eyes meet Richie’s again, and there’s something wild there, something terrible. “Richie if you were scared of me I would die. I don’t like lying to you and keeping secrets from you but I can’t tell you because if you were scared of me I would die.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, louder, like that can stop Eddie from thinking it. “I wouldn’t. I don’t know what’s going on but I would never be scared of you. I— I’m scared _for you,_ right now, but I wouldn’t be scared _of_ you. I know who you are. I know you.”

“No you _fucking_ don’t,” Eddie snarls, and that hurts—Richie jerks back from the force of it. But Eddie just draws back, sliding against the wall, and says, “I know you would hate me, Richie, because _I_ hate me.”

“Why?” Richie begs. 

Eddie’s openly crying, now, and it’s scary, because he looks terrified, and Richie thought he’d _seen_ Eddie terrified, under Neibolt. But this is different, this is...this is visceral, a full-body reaction. He’s gasping, and scratching at his skin, and he’s ripping Richie’s shirt off his body like it’s burning him, and a part of Richie wonders, _is this psychosis? Is that what's happening right now?_ He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

“Please,” Eddie begs, “please, please, Richie, I don’t want to— I don’t want to hurt you. I need you to go so that I don’t hurt you. If I hurt you I’d never fucking forgive myself.”

Richie is shaking, but he opens his mouth and says, “I’m more scared of you hurting yourself, Eddie.”

Eddie makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and then he shudders and says, “Oh, _fuck._ No.” And for a second, instead of looking scared, he just looks so fucking sad. 

And then something happens. 

It starts with a groaning, a creaking, and Eddie makes a sound like pure agony. He bows his head, hunches in on himself, and Richie wants to ask him if he’s okay, if he needs Richie to call 911. But then there’s blood on the tile floor, and Richie’s heart is jamming up into his throat, and there’s the distinct, gut-wrenching sound of bones snapping. Richie knows that sound. He knows it too well. 

And that’s when he notices Eddie _changing._

Richie’s back is against the wall before he even notices he’s moving. He thinks, somewhere at the back of his mind, that if he hadn’t seen half the shit he’s seen in the past year, he’d think he’s hallucinating. But the sounds Eddie’s making are very, very real. His spine is curving, his skin is stretching, his shoulder blades are _breaking,_ and then reforming, twisted and hunched. Eddie’s making pained, choked sounds, like he’s trying to hold them back but can’t, breaths coming fast and harsh and desperate. His hands are on his knees, and claws are sprouting from his fingertips, pushing through skin that bleeds before healing over and then splitting further again. 

“God,” Eddie says—begs, through clenched teeth. His back arches sharply, and Richie hears another snap that makes him want to throw up. 

“Eddie?” he manages to say, horrified. 

But Eddie doesn’t seem to hear him, fingers growing, curling, digging into the skin of his thighs, drawing more blood that drips down his legs to puddle at his feet. He groans, neck and spine lengthening, ribs pushing out against his skin grotesquely. When Pennywise shifted into new forms in front of them, he did it quickly, smoothly—this is anything but that. For a moment, Richie is so sickened by it, by this thing Eddie is becoming that his hands itch to do something to stop it, to, to _destroy it._

But then Eddie’s head snaps up, and he looks at Richie, and. And he’s still Eddie. His eyebrows are pulled together, agonized but also terrified, his eyes huge and pleading. Hair is sprouting thick across his chest, his arms. His bare feet stretch and snap into horrible shapes; claws push through his toes, and there’s more blood. He opens his mouth, and bloodied fangs peek through his lips. He whispers, “Richie.”

“Eddie,” Richie chokes, and then Eddie screams, or maybe roars. His jaw snaps. His nose flattens, and then his face begins to lengthen. He rips off his shorts—the last piece of clothing on his body—and dark fur begins to obscure most of his skin. 

It’s horrible. It’s _horrifying._ It’s so obviously excruciatingly painful, and it’s slow and grotesque, and Richie both can’t stand to watch it and can’t make himself look away. His stomach threatens to revolt. His eyes prickle with tears, both of sympathy and of revulsion. 

Eddie—or whatever Eddie has become—looks up at him, and the eyes are barely familiar, still that rich brown Richie knows so well but also distinctly canine, watching him from under dark, furred brows. He settles onto massive front paws, and his lip curls in a snarl, and Richie wonders, numbly, if he’s about to die. It’s a horribly familiar feeling. 

“Eddie,” he breathes. 

Eddie—the beast—makes no indication that he understands him. It’s huge now, much bigger than Richie if it were to stand on its back legs, a hulking thing with massive paws and fangs that jut from powerful jaws, wolf-like in design but also something else, something _more._ The shape of it is faintly grotesque, still changing in jerks and snaps but already long and bony, skin stretched tight over its enormous frame, fur still matted with blood in places. Its ears are flat back against its massive skull, and its lips are drawn back in a snarl as it stares straight at Richie, still shaking with either pain or fury. 

“Eddie,” he says again, desperate. 

The wolf advances on him, just one step, and it snatches the breath from Richie’s lungs. It could kill him in one bite—he knows this, instinctively. It could tear his throat out. Crush his skull between its jaws. Gore him with its claws. It would only take a second. One breath, one blink. 

Richie thinks about groping for the door, bolting out of the apartment. He thinks about making a break for it, even though he knows he’d never make it. 

But then he thinks, _I can’t leave Eddie._ He thinks, _I don’t know where he is, if this is him or if he’s somewhere inside that thing, but I can’t leave him. I didn’t leave him then, and I won’t now._

He squares his shoulders, and swallows his fear, and says, more firmly, “Eddie?”

The beast takes another step forward, and then another. Richie feels himself trembling. His mind goes white. He thinks, insanely, about Pennywise. He wonders if this is It, if this is some sick new joke, if the Eddie he’s barely seen since everything under Neibolt was another of It’s lies. But no. Richie remembers Eddie’s warmth. The secret, tender edges of him. Pennywise was never, could never be warm. 

And he still remembers what Eddie said. _I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to be scared of me._

He doesn’t know what’s happening, but he knows Eddie must have known. And he never wanted this. 

A cold, wet nose presses into Richie’s sternum. Hot breath puffs against his chest. A growl rumbles low in the creature’s throat. Richie makes a soft, whining sound that he can’t control. 

And then it lifts its head. It huffs out a breath against Richie’s throat, and snuffles at his clavicle. It makes a new noise, a whuff of sound, pushes its nose into his armpit. It’s so fucking huge, the size of a bear at least, and its teeth are bare inches from Richie’s jugular. It could all be over in a split second. 

Instead, it shoves its snout into Richie’s stomach, noses under the hem of his shirt. It’s quieter now, but it pins Richie to the wall with its nose, its sheer size enough even without its brute strength, its powerful jaws and heavy paws. Its back is still shifting under a layer of heavy fur, ribs settling into place. Richie can smell warm blood on it. Eddie’s blood. Richie will never forget the smell of it. 

The beast sniffs up his front, into his throat again, and then it lifts its head high enough to press right into its face, and Richie thinks he’d be terrified if it wasn’t so bizarre. He can’t even see anything, it’s so close and pushing its damp nose into his cheek, and Richie can’t help but close his eyes. Coarse fur brushes against his skin. Richie doesn’t know if he should feel repulsed. 

The beast huffs in his face. Richie can do nothing but stand there and wait for whatever is about to happen next. His throat clicks as he swallows. 

But all it does is press its nose between Richie and the wall, coaxing him away from it. It squeezes behind him, still snuffling at him, poking its massive snout into his back, between his shoulderblades, the nape of his neck. It’s _investigating_ him. It makes another low sound, but this one isn’t threatening. It’s...something else. Richie doesn’t know. Maybe thoughtful. 

It stands in front of him and looks at him. It’s eyes are dark, and Richie can’t read anything in them. He manages a quick, tight breath, and holds out his hands. “Eddie?” he says, for what feels like the hundredth time. “You recognize me, right? You know me.” His voice comes out hoarse, cracked. The beast stares at him silently, and Richie says, “Buddy? You in there?”

The beast doesn’t reply, and the more Richie looks at it, the more he doubts that it can. There’s a certain life in its eyes, a gutting intensity, but he’s not sure it has...comprehension. Intelligence. Whatever this thing is, if it’s Eddie or if it _has_ Eddie, it doesn’t have Eddie’s mind, or at least not all of it. If Eddie’s in there, he’s deep. And Richie has no idea if he’ll resurface. Eddie told him so little. Almost nothing.

But as it stands, this wolf, this...thing. It seems to know Richie, or at least, to a certain extent, trust him. Where it was first hostile, it’s now merely wary, uncertain. Its ears flick back, its heavy tail lashes to the side, its lips lift quickly and then lower again. It moves toward Richie again, then away, huffing an agitated breath. It approaches and smells Richie again, like it's confirming something. And then it squeezes behind Richie again and pushes him with its huge head, and Richie stumbles forward, towards the center of the room. The wolf nudges him again, and again, using its head and shoulder. Richie’s knees feel like jello, but there’s nothing he can do but go, until the wolf has herded him towards the door to Eddie’s bedroom. 

Richie’s head is spinning, but he goes in, lets himself be nudged towards the bed. Richie’s barely been in here this past week. He looks around now, stupidly. The bed is a mess. Eddie’s blankets are everywhere. Richie’s knees hit the edge of the mattress. 

“What?” Richie says, as the wolf continues to push its nose into his back. “What? You want me to get in? Are you sending me to fucking bed?”

The wolf breathes hot at his elbow. Richie kicks off his shoes, because he’s not a monster. Or—bad word choice. He’s not...a barbarian. Is that racist? Richie thinks he might be losing his mind. 

He scoffs softly and climbs into bed. “This isn’t even the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, maybe to the wolf, maybe to no one. “This isn’t— I mean, people changing forms? Things fucking...transforming into other things? Old news.” He draws a shaky breath, kneeling on the bed, and slowly he curls over to press his forehead into the mattress, to hide his face for a moment as he feels fear grip him, terror that Eddie is gone, or that Eddie was always gone, that this was all just...some figment of his imagination. Or that Richie himself is going insane. Or that he will never know what happened. Or if he could have stopped it. 

He inhales, breath wobbling. 

The bed dips violently. Richie grips at the loose sheets. The wolf curls ungracefully next to Richie, and then shifts and pushes Richie over, onto his side. The wolf gets up again, adjusts its position. It pushes its body up under Richie’s head, curls around him, almost protectively. It takes up nearly the entire bed. Richie doesn’t quite know what’s going on. 

“Okay,” he says breathlessly, heart pounding. “Okay. We’re doing this, then. We’re going to bed?”

The wolf doesn’t respond, curling tighter around him, resting one giant paw on him to pin him down. When Richie tries to shift his weight off of his arm, the wolf growls low in its chest, and the sound strikes fresh, visceral fear into his gut, and he freezes, eyes squeezed shut. Slowly, the wolf settles again. 

Richie tries to force himself to relax. He realizes he has something gripped tight in his fist, from when he tried to cling to the sheets. It’s fabric, it’s—his own shirt, one of the shirts he found Eddie wearing earlier in the week. It makes Richie both nervous and more relaxed. Confused, chaotic emotions are rushing through his blood. He shivers. 

The wolf tucks its massive head close to him and exhales. Richie exhales too. 

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s, uh. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

He’s not sure if that’s the truth. But he knows there’s nothing else he can do. 

God. What the fuck. 


	3. Chapter 3

Eddie wakes up so slowly that it’s almost painful, fighting his way up through heavy layers of dark dreams and semi-consciousness until finally, finally, he can open his eyes. 

He’s in his bed, exhausted and aching but, for once, not alone. He’s lying on top of his blankets, and he’s completely naked, but he’s warm, the entirety of his front pressed up along a solid body, blessedly clothed. Richie is in his bed—Eddie would recognize the smell of him in his sleep—and he’s still asleep, breathing slow and deep. Eddie is plastered against his broad back, arms wrapped around his waist, and Eddie has never been so disgusted with himself in his life. 

He knows he has to get up. The night’s events are fuzzy to him still, filtering up through a consciousness that still feels mixed, but he knows that...Richie knows. He knows Richie saw him, and even worse, he knows that he kept Richie here. That even if Richie had tried to escape, Eddie wouldn’t have let him, not as the wolf. He’d tried so hard to get Richie to leave. He didn’t try hard enough. 

Eddie’s stomach rolls, and he wants to get up, _needs_ to get up, needs to rip himself away from this warm body in his bed, but it’s so hard. He’s exhausted and everything hurts, brittle bones still healing, blood still staining his jaw, his fingertips. But he’s also painfully aware that this is the best full moon he’s ever experienced. Or—scratch that. The best full moon he’s experienced since his dad was alive. That was the last time he wasn’t alone. The last time the wolf didn’t throw itself against the wall, longing to get out, to find a pack. The last time the wolf felt safe, and even more than that, the last time the wolf had something it wanted to protect. 

God. Eddie can remember, dimly, growling at Richie when he moved in the bed. He knows it was instinctive, that it was driven by the desire to keep him safe, but Eddie hates the message behind it, the coercion. The threat. _I will not let you leave._

He pries his arms loose and rolls himself off the bed, scrambling clumsily for shorts to pull on before stumbling into the bathroom in case he throws up from the horror and self-loathing crawling up his throat. 

God, he wasn’t even supposed to _shift_ last night. It’s so fucking unfair. He hasn’t had a pre-moon shift since he was a kid. 

He’s still in the bathroom, gripping the sink as blood-pink water drips down the drain, knees weak and shaky, when he hears Richie stirring. Eddie swallows hard, squeezes his eyes shut. He’s so hungry he could gnaw his own arm off, and so tired his vision is going blurry. For a few seconds, he just has to stand there, leaning heavily against the sink, and breathe slowly through his nose. 

Footsteps at the bathroom door. It’s closed, but not locked. Richie’s voice, tentative, as he says, “Eddie?”

Eddie chokes down bile. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice cracking. “Rich, I’m sorry. You can— You should go.”

“Like fuck,” Richie says. His hand on the doorknob, turning it. “Can I come in?”

“You shouldn’t,” Eddie rasps. He’s not sure why, but he feels like it’s true. 

“Can I?”

Eddie doesn’t respond. The door opens. 

Richie stands in the doorway, but doesn’t step in. There are bruises under his searching eyes. He didn’t sleep much, and it makes Eddie feel even worse. Who the fuck _would_ sleep, pinned to a bed by a monster? 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and wishes Richie would stop looking at him. 

Richie doesn’t, and Eddie thinks, masochistically, that he deserves how terrible it makes him feel. “Eddie,” Richie says softly. “God, I was so fucking worried about you.”

Eddie barely has a chance to blink before Richie is closing the distance between them, wrapping Eddie in his arms, _hugging him._ Eddie is frozen for a moment, stunned, and then he starts, pathetically, to cry. 

He can’t help it. He’s so tired, and his body hurts, and he’s scared and confused and angry and Richie’s arms are so warm, and so strong, and so gentle. And no one has done this for Eddie since he was a small, terrified child. No one has held him like this, no one has squeezed him tight like he isn’t made of glass, no one has tucked their face into the crook of his neck and breathed him in and said, _“I’m so glad you’re okay.”_

His mom and Myra were exactly the same. They worried about him, they made sure he was safe. But not like this. They never stayed with him. They never clung to him. They coddled and nursed and told him they wanted what was best for him, but they never asked him what he needed, and they _never_ hugged him the next morning, and rubbed his back, and pressed their faces into his shoulder and told him it was okay, that everything was going to be okay. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie chokes, shoulders shaking, lungs squeezing, hands curled tight in the sides of Richie’s sweater. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so fucked up, Richie, I’m so sorry.”

“Shhh,” Richie says, holding him tighter. “It’s okay, we’re okay.”

“It’s not fucking okay!” Eddie says, choking on a sob he can’t contain, leaking tears and snot all over Richie’s shoulder. “It’s not okay, Richie, I’m a fucking werewolf!”

Richie goes tense for a second, frozen against Eddie, like a flinch that lasts too long, and it makes Eddie sick. Richie pulls away, and Eddie wants to tear his fucking hair out. But all Richie does is hold Eddie by the shoulders, and look at him, and say, “Is that what it is? Is that...what happened?”

Eddie can’t meet his eyes as he takes a rattling breath and nods. 

“Holy fuck,” Richie says. “My best friend is a _werewolf.”_

A small, stupid spark of hope ignites in Eddie’s chest at the words _best friend._ But he quashes it, swallows it, buries it in the fear that Richie knows now. He knows. In words. 

A werewolf. 

“You should leave,” Eddie says, barely above a whisper. 

Richie scoffs. “Are you fucking crazy? Not a chance.”

And Eddie wants to argue, but a wave of dizziness sweeps through him, and he wobbles where he stands, held up only by Richie’s hands on his arms. His vision goes black at the edges, and he barely registers Richie catching him by the elbows, talking in his ear. “Whoa,” he’s saying, from somewhere far away. “Okay, back to bed, come on.”

Eddie tries to shake his head, but it makes him feel like he’s about to pass out, so he lets Richie guide him back to his room, sits down on the edge of his bed and then lies back until his head stops spinning. He feels the mattress dip next to him, and Richie lies down six inches away. Eddie opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling, and Richie, presumably, does the same. 

For a minute, it’s completely quiet save for the asynchronous sounds of their breathing; Richie’s slow and even, Eddie’s quick and shallow. There’s a thump from another room, and a few seconds later Eddie hears Martin pad into the room. He jumps up onto the bed, and then settles on top of Richie’s stomach. Richie pets him soothingly. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Eddie’s throat closes up, and hot tears spring fresh to his eyes. He doesn’t want to say anything. Somehow, miraculously, Richie is still here, is still willing to be in the same room as him, despite what happened. Eddie is so fucking scared of saying something that will change that. “I couldn’t,” he manages, almost too soft to be heard. 

“You couldn’t, or you didn’t want to?” 

Eddie shakes his head. “You don’t understand.”

Silence, and then, “Yeah, probably not.” Richie sighs. “How long?”

Eddie’s head hurts. His nose burns. His teeth ache. “Always. As long as you’ve known me.”

Richie’s breath catches audibly. “You’re shitting me.”

Eddie doesn’t respond. God, his bones are killing him. And he’s so, so hungry. If he was the wolf, he thinks he might try to eat Martin. He’s always scared he’s going to eat Martin, always locks him away in a different room to keep him safe. 

“That long, Eds? Always? What, since you were born?”

Eddie shakes his head, closes his eyes against the dawn sunlight filtering in through his window. It’s been a long time since he didn’t try to escape through it during the night. “Since I was a kid. Camping trip. Got bitten.”

“Holy shit.” Richie blows out a slow breath. “So, what, every month? That happens?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, voice choked. “Every 29 days.”

“Wow,” Richie says, and then is quiet again for a while before he says, again, _“Wow.”_

Eddie makes a soft sound like a scoff and presses his fist into his throbbing temple. 

“Every month,” Richie says. “And you never told me? Who knew?”

“Only my parents, growing up,” Eddie says. “And then. Myra.”

“You’re a _werewolf_ and Myra _knew?”_ Richie sounds incredulous. 

Eddie understands why. But, “That’s why we were together at all. Why...why I was willing to be with...anyone. She already knew.” He pauses, wondering if he should go on, if it’s wise to keep talking, but before he can even make up his mind, he’s opening his clumsy mouth, jaw cracking. “There was...a period in my life, when I wanted to find out more. You know, the internet was becoming more accessible, and suddenly there were. All these possibilities. I was just looking for _anything,_ anyone who knew anything. There was this forum, and. She was on there. She had a brother. Who was the same.”

“Oh,” Richie says. “Had?”

“He, um. He died. I don’t really know— I think they were trying to cure him, maybe. She never really talked about it, but. You know, that’s why she was so. Protective, and stuff. Like, obviously that wasn’t—she wasn’t good, she wasn’t good for me, but. And she shouldn’t have used it to control me. I’m glad I left, I needed to leave. But. It was nice. For someone to know.”

Eddie bites his lip, forces himself to stop talking. He never thought he would tell anyone this. _Never._ But now that he’s opened his mouth, it’s a flood of words he can’t stop from spilling out. It feels like picking at a scab—painful, but impossible to stop once you’ve started, with both the promise of relief and an open wound waiting for him at the end. He has the insane desire to slap a bandaid over it. 

“Eddie,” Richie says quietly. “Why didn’t you ever tell me? Or any of us?”

“I _couldn’t,”_ Eddie says, and it comes out like a sob. 

“I thought that’s what we _learned_ in Derry. We don’t go through things alone. We stick together. We’re _better together.”_

And Eddie says, voice hoarse, “I thought we learned about killing monsters.”

There’s a beat as Richie hears what he doesn’t say. “Eddie,” he says. He keeps saying his name, over and over, like he wants Eddie to know that he knows, that Richie knows who he’s talking to, that Richie knows this, here, is Eddie. “You’re not a monster. Never. Never to me.”

Another sob builds in Eddie’s throat, and he chokes it down, but he can’t stop his eyes from welling up again, his breaths from hitching. He rubs at his face desperately. “I never wanted you to find out.”

“Why?”

“Are you kidding me? Richie, fuck, you saw me. I’m a— I’m a fucking _animal._ I could have _killed you,_ Richie, I’m not _me_ when I’m the wolf, I can’t control what I do, I could have _killed you._ One second and you could have been dead and it would have been _my fault,_ because I couldn’t fucking get you to leave.”

A warm hand touches Eddie’s, and Eddie jerks away from it, heart rabbiting in his throat. Richie swallows thickly, retreats. “You didn’t,” he says. “You didn’t, and neither did the wolf. I’m still here. We’re okay.”

“That doesn’t change what I _am._ You don’t know what it’s like, what it’s— Thirty-five years I have been that thing, it’s been inside me and sometimes it _consumes me,_ you don’t know what it’s like. You don’t know how I— How hungry it gets, how badly it wants to get out. You don’t know what it’s like to have a monster inside you.” 

“You’re not a monster,” Richie repeats, voice firm. 

Eddie laughs, sick and humourless. “Then what am I?”

“You’re Eddie,” Richie says, as if it’s that simple. “You’re my best friend.”

Eddie blinks hard, shakes his head. “I could have killed you.”

“You didn’t.”

Eddie exhales, and it’s painful. “God, it fucking hurts,” he says pathetically, because he’s never been able to before. He couldn’t tell his mom how bad it hurt, or Myra, because they’d just keep him in bed longer, cram him full of medication, keep him locked away. Now, finally, he can breathe deep against aching ribs and say, “It hurts so _fucking_ much.”

“I’m sorry,” Richie says, as if any of this is his fault. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Eddie says. “There’s nothing anyone can fucking do.”

“Can I get you some Advil?”

“It’s not a fucking headache,” Eddie snaps, not entirely sure why. He _does_ take pain medication the morning after a shift. It _does_ help. But he’s scared, and in pain, and he’s a fucking mess. “You were _there,_ Richie, my bones fucking _snapped._ I bled all over the fucking floor. Hundreds of fucking times, my body has been ripped apart and then stitched back together, and it fucking _hurts,_ and that’s just the way it is.”

“Okay, Eds, I’m sorry if I don’t know what to fucking do! I’m sorry! I just found out you’re a fucking werewolf, and I must have missed _Lycanthropy 101 - How to Support your Canine Best Friend!_ I’m fucking sorry, I’m just trying to help!”

Eddie swallows hard, and squeezes his eyes shut, and says, “Lupine.”

A pause, and then, “What?”

“Lupine,” Eddie says, before adding, more hesitantly, “Best Friend. Not canine. I’m a wolf.”

Richie snorts, and then starts laughing, soft and a little hysterical. Martin growls lowly, like it’s Eddie’s fault. “Holy shit,” Richie says, rubbing his eyes. “You’re a fucking wolf.”

Eddie sighs, tipping his head back, eyes stinging. “Yeah.”

“Damn,” Richie says. “My only secret is that I’m gay.”

And that’s—that’s fucking something, but all Eddie can do is kind of laugh in a way that sounds like he might be crying, and he’s too tired to be shocked and too tired to really process it and too tired to do anything but say, “Well, fuck. I’m that too.”

They breathe into the ensuing silence. It must be something like six in the morning. Eddie desperately wants to go back to sleep. All of this barely feels real, and at the same time feels so real that he can’t handle it. 

Richie’s hand touches Eddie’s where it’s lying between them. Exhausted, confused, desperate, Eddie lets his fingers spread open. Richie threads his own through them, and squeezes. 

They don’t talk. They just lie there, and breathe, and Eddie tries to ignore the way his entire world has shifted. He’s too tired for this shit. 

🌕

When Richie wakes up from his unintended nap, stretched out sideways across Eddie’s bed with his legs still dangling over the edge, the morning sunlight is no longer dull and grey, but strong and bright, slanting through Eddie’s window. Martin is scratching at Eddie’s bedpost and meowing insistently. Eddie himself is lying next to Richie, feet pulled up onto the bed, curled on his side and facing him, face soft apart from his pinched eyebrows. His fingers are still intertwined limply with Richie’s. 

Richie inhales deeply, chokes back a wave of emotion he has no idea what to do with, and takes a moment to just...look at him. 

Last night was, undeniably, completely fucking crazy. Maybe it was so fucking crazy that Richie still can’t totally process it, but also, it’s not even in like the top 10 craziest things Richie’s ever seen. He fought a fucking shapeshifting demon alien clown before he hit puberty. Richie Tozier has _seen some shit._

His best friend being a werewolf, well. It’s pretty batshit wild. And it’s so obviously a huge fucking deal for Eddie, and Richie doesn’t want to downplay that, doesn’t want to make Eddie feel like he’s stupid or crazy for making a big deal of it. But in the end, it’s. It’s still Eddie, isn’t it? The same Eddie he’s always known. He was always a werewolf, apparently. So nothing has changed, other than the fact that Richie knows, and Eddie knows he knows. 

And he’s gay, apparently. And so is Richie, and. He told Eddie. In the face of everything else, it seemed...so small, so simple. Whenever Richie imagined telling anyone, telling _Eddie,_ he imagined it being this huge, terrifying thing, with him sitting down his best friend, gathering his nerves, spilling the truth. But in the moment, it just...came out. And it felt good. It felt so much better than some huge, scary scene. He knows it’ll have to come up again, probably. For both of them. But his cards are on the table. And so are Eddie’s. 

It feels good. 

But holy fuck, though. Eddie’s _gay?_ Eddie Kaspbrak? Likes _men?_ Since fucking _when?_

Martin yowls needily. Eddie’s face scrunches up, and Richie can tell he’s going to wake up. He watches it happen, the flickering of the muscles in his jaw, the slight fluttering of his eyelids, the way his dimple presses into his cheek. Richie has the sudden, intense urge to _know_ him. To know everything there is to know about him. 

Also the urge to kiss him, to stroke the hair back from his forehead and catch his soft, warm mouth with his lips, to get his hands on all that beautiful warm skin. But that’s a familiar feeling, and something he can’t think about too soon after the realization that it’s not as depressingly impossible as he once thought. God, he _better_ not fucking get his hopes up. 

Richie squeezes his hand a little, and thinks, _since when the fuck is he gay??_

Eddie’s eyelids flutter, and then open. He blinks, sees Richie looking at him from maybe a foot away. Their eyes meet, and something shivers between them. Richie is reminded, viscerally, of the moment on the couch last night, right before Eddie kicked him out. (He’s _gay?!)_

“Morning,” Richie says, so that he doesn’t say something else that’s much worse. 

Eddie blinks a few more times, like he can’t quite get his bearings. He opens his mouth, and his voice is low and hoarse when he says, “What time’s it?”

Richie shrugs, not wanting to look away from his face. “Shit, do you have to work?”

Eddie huffs a half-laugh through his nose, squinting against the sunlight as he shakes his head. “Texted my boss last night. Can’t work after a shift.”

“Oh,” Richie says, and wants, again, to know everything. 

Eddie’s eyes move from Richie’s face to their hands between them. Something changes in his face, and he lets go. It hits Richie like a punch to the stomach. Eddie sits up, rubs his hands over his face. Richie admires, dimly, the curve of his spine, the huge scar from Pennywise’s claw piercing his ribs. The tattoo on the nape of his neck. He’s seeing it clearly for the first time. A purple flower set against a circle. He props himself up on one elbow and reaches out, unwisely, to touch it. 

Eddie flinches away, and then sighs and slumps. “Sorry.”

Richie makes a vague noise. “Can I ask?”

Eddie shrugs. “It’s stupid. It’s—wolfsbane. Legendary werewolf repellant and/or cure. Inside a full moon. I don’t know, I thought it was a good idea at the time.”

Richie hums. “Was it, like, an empowerment thing? Or a self-loathing thing?”

“Ha. More of the latter, probably.” Eddie sounds tired, like he’s had to explain it a hundred times, mostly to himself. “Not sure if I wanted it to be symbolic of like...separation, me from the wolf, or if I wanted to brand myself. A big fucking _don’t forget,_ as if I ever could.”

Richie nods, as if he gets it, as if he could ever get it. He touches a fingertip to the tattoo again, traces the curve of one leaf. Eddie shivers, and then stands. 

“I need to feed Martin.”

Richie rakes his eyes over him, his lean back and his strong legs. “How’re you feeling?”

“Like I feel after every shift,” Eddie says, moving to pick up a t-shirt from the floor. One of his own. For once. Richie is stupidly disappointed. “Like shit. And like I have to do shit anyway.”

Richie hauls himself upright, bends down to pet Martin’s arching back as he rubs up against his ankles. “Is this why cats hate you?” he blurts. 

Eddie glances back at him, sharp at first and then just tired. “Yeah,” he sighs. “I mean, I’m guessing. Martin’s not a huge fan of the guy that turns into a hulking animal once a month.” And then he bites his lip, glances at Richie before his gaze skitters away, and his shoulders hunch as he says, “It’s going to happen again. Tonight.”

Richie feels his eyebrows shoot up his forehead. “You’re shitting me.” 

Eddie shakes his head, and walks out of the room. 

Richie follows him. “Why would it happen again? You just said it happens once a month.”

“It usually does,” Eddie says, moving gingerly to the hallway closet, opening it, finding a tin of cat food that he pries open. “It’s— Full moons can be weird. The moment of the full moon—when it’s actually 100% full—can happen at...any time during the day. Not necessarily at night, or whatever. The wolf is trying harder to get out the closer it gets to being full, especially at night. I mean. I can feel it pretty intensely a day or two leading up to the actual event.” 

He makes his way over to Martin’s food bowl, dumps the tin into it. Martin gives him a wide berth as he makes his way over to start eating. Eddie touches his rump gently, and Martin starts growling in response. “The night that I actually shift—the night the wolf fights its way out—depends on when the full moon falls. The pull is strongest leading up to the moment of the full moon, and decreases pretty fast afterward. If the moon goes full during the night, I’ll shift at nightfall on that day. If it’s early in the day, I’ll shift the night preceding. If it’s really late in the day, it’ll happen the night after. But if it’s in the middle of the day, things get kind of gray. Usually it’ll still happen the night before, since the pull gets weaker as soon as the moon starts waning. Before 4pm, I can usually assume it’ll happen the night before, and the night after will be rough but I’ll...stay human. After 4, and it’ll be the other way around. Depends a bit on the season, how early nightfall is.” He sighs, standing and leaning against the wall, eyes closed. “I can usually feel what night it’s going to happen. I’ve done it over 400 times. I know the rhythms. But I haven’t...I haven’t had a back-to-back shift since I was a kid.”

Richie blinks, trying to process all of that. “So...you weren’t expecting to shift last night. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that you weren’t.”

Eddie shakes his head. He looks a little pale, like maybe he shouldn’t be up and about, but Richie’s not about to tell him that. “No, I. Full moon’s at 5 today. I shouldn’t have shifted last night. It’s a bit of a grey zone, but. I haven’t shifted the night before a full moon that late in _decades._ It’s just. I don’t know, I wasn’t prepared, I guess. I usually have this whole routine, rest and food and exercise, and it helps. To resist, or whatever. And...I’ve been stressed. And busy. It wasn’t supposed to happen. _God,”_ he says, raking his fingers over his face, “it wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”

Richie swallows hard. “Was it...my fault?”

“No,” Eddie sighs. “No, it was mine. I shouldn’t have...I shouldn’t have let you stay that long. I should have been paying closer attention. I should have known it was coming.”

Richie licks his lips and says, “You don’t have to know everything.”

Eddie laughs bitterly. “When you’re a fucking werewolf, Rich, you kind of do.”

Richie rubs his palms over his thighs. He slept in _jeans._ For what feels like the hundredth time, he says, “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Eddie says, quick and short. “You can go home.”

“Eddie,” Richie says, in a voice that he hopes says _I’m tired of this._ “I’m not leaving.”

Eddie rounds on him, snarling. His eyes are luminous. That happened last night, too, and Richie finally recognizes it for what it is—wolf eyes. Just as Richie could see a little bit of Eddie in the wolf’s eyes, he can see the wolf here, in Eddie’s. “You don’t have a fucking choice, Richie. Are you fucking stupid? I could have killed you. One wrong move and I could have snapped your neck.”

“You _didn’t,”_ Richie says. “You tucked me into bed, Eddie! Nothing happened! It was fucked up when I didn’t know what was _going on,_ but nothing _happened._ I’m not—” He stops, remembers something Eddie said last night, right before he shifted. _If you were scared of me I would die._ Richie swallows hard. “I’m not scared of you. Eddie. I’m not scared.”

Eddie’s eyes flood with tears, and he turns away, walks to the counter and leans against it heavily, head bowed. His shoulders shake, and he takes a deep breath that rattles audibly, then two, three. His fingers curl. Richie can still see, in his mind’s eye, claws cutting through the skin of his fingertips. “I can’t risk hurting you,” he says, voice low and hoarse. 

Richie’s heart pounds in his throat. “Have you ever? Hurt anyone?”

_“No!”_ Eddie says, whipping around again and then visibly going pale and dizzy. His eyes flutter shut. “No, god. Never. I—I don’t know what I would have done with myself if I had. But I. I don’t have _control,_ Richie. I’m a fucking helpless bystander. And I’m...so hungry. The wolf is so hungry, and always hurting, and desperate. It’s killed animals, like rabbits and squirrels and shit. And it’s scared. And I wouldn’t be able to stop it if it tried to hurt someone else. Or if it _bit someone._ Richie, if I turned you—” 

“You didn’t,” Richie says. “You didn’t do anything like that. We just...slept.”

Some colour floods back into Eddie’s cheeks. “That was...that wasn’t me. That wasn’t my choice.”

“That’s my point,” Richie says. “The wolf had its chance. And it just...went to bed.”

Eddie shakes his head. “This time. I can’t know— If it happened again—”

“I want to be there,” Richie says. “With you.”

Eddie’s eyes seem to go glassy and faraway. He doesn’t answer, and suddenly Richie is scared of what he’ll say, so he cuts in and says, “Have you— Has the wolf never been around people before? Your mom, or anything?”

Eddie hesitates, and then shakes his head. “Not really. Not since, uh, my dad. But I don’t remember those shifts very well. And then he died, and. My mom and Myra both sort of just...locked me away. I mean, it was my own choice. Kind of. But Myra never even witnessed it. And my mom tried not to.”

Richie shakes his head. “Fuck them.”

Eddie scoffs tiredly. “Well, what do you expect, Rich? I turn into a fucking—”

“You’re not a monster.” Richie meets his gaze and tries, desperately, to hold it. 

Eddie breaks it first. “I don’t know what else I could be.”

Richie sighs, and has no good answer. “So the wolf doesn’t typically act like that? All, you know. Cuddly and shit?”

Eddie clears his throat. “No. Last night was...weird.”

“Weird because of the circumstances or weird because...me?” Richie doesn’t even know what he wants the answer to be. 

But Eddie just says, “I don’t know,” and Richie is pretty sure he’s lying, but he lets it go. He can only pick so many battles. Can only press Eddie for so many answers. 

And he wants _answers._ More of them as the day goes on, as Eddie stiffly eats breakfast while Richie moisturizes Martin on the couch, as they scrub dried blood off the floor. The questions keep coming to him, sneaking into his thoughts whether he tries or not. 

“The healing thing,” he says, apropos of nothing, as he washes the few dishes in the sink. “The— You were bleeding last night. And now you’re fine.”

Eddie nods, lying on the couch with closed eyes, looking weak and tired. Richie can’t believe he’s going to have to shift _again,_ tonight, when the first one already took so much out of him. “Yeah. It’s part of why I’m so fucking drained after. All my extra energy goes into whatever fucking...super-healing mode that happens when I shift. The point is obviously to heal all the things that broke in the process of transforming, but my body ends up fixing anything else that was wrong, too.”

“Your chest,” Richie says. “From Pennywise.”

Eddie’s mouth quirks up in a crooked half-smile. “Yeah, that was...a rough night. Hurt like hell. I thought I was going to die. I thought the pain would kill me, even if the wound hadn’t. And then I came out of it, you know, good as new. Comparatively.”

Richie swallows hard. “Is that why you survived? Because you’re not...human?”

Eddie shrugs. “I don’t know. When I think about it…” He trails off, like he’s not sure he should say it—like he’s thought about it a lot, but isn’t sure if voicing it is wise. “When I think about it, I sometimes wonder if I should be grateful, if that’s why. Or if I should begrudge it for keeping me alive.”

Richie’s eyes go hot, and his temples throb. “I’m grateful. I’m...so grateful.”

Eddie sighs, and pretends to be asleep.

And later, Richie can’t help but ask, “How did it happen? Getting bitten.”

“I was a kid,” Eddie says, clearly forcing down the soup Richie made him even though he’s obviously starving. “I was camping. With my dad. It was dark, I was alone. I don’t remember much about it. Hurt like hell. I thought it was a dog or something.” 

And, “Can you feel the wolf all the time? Is its consciousness separate from yours?”

“Parts of it feel separate,” says Eddie, facedown now on the couch like that’ll help somehow. “It’s… The wolf and me are both part of one whole. Its instincts are my instincts, its desires are my desires. But they wax and wane with the moon, and. Sometimes it feels like the wolf’s mind is separate from my own. Like we share a brain, but I’m in control. Well, most of the time. And during the shift, the wolf takes over, and I just have to watch.”

And, “So this was happening when we were kids? With fucking...Pennywise and shit? You were a _werewolf?”_

“Yeah, Richie, it’s not something that fucking went away. When I broke my arm, and my mom made me stay home—I shifted a week into it. My arm wasn’t even fucking broken when we went back.”

And, “Is that why you hated it so much when I called you getting sick all the time your _time of the month?”_

“No, I hated that because it was obnoxious and stupid.” And then, “But yeah, it hit a little too close to home.”

Richie thinks about other things he said back then. About Eddie being a yappy little dog, when he got too excited about something. About Eddie being a freak, when he could tell that Richie’s mom bought a new kind of shampoo. About werewolves. 

Richie remembers telling Eddie he was afraid of werewolves. That Pennywise turned into one, when Richie saw It, that first time. He’d been lying. He lied. He was scared of werewolves, back then, fresh off of seeing one in the movies, but he was never scared of anything more than his friends finding out what he was. _God_. And for Eddie it was both.

It’s nearly three in the afternoon by the time Eddie shakes himself awake from another nap to force more food down his throat—and it’s just ground beef cooked in butter, which is disgusting but apparently what a werewolf needs pre- _and_ post-shift—and squints at Richie as he asks, “Did you miss your fucking flight?”

Richie huffs a soft laugh. “I rescheduled it. I’ll go home tomorrow morning. When I’m sure you’re okay.”

Eddie watches Richie move around the room with eyes that feel heavier, more intense than usual. Richie thinks he’s going to press the issue, remind Richie that he can’t stay here, that he won’t let him, but all he says is, “Are you going to tell people?”

“Huh?”

“About me.” Eddie rubs at his unshaved jaw. “Are you going to tell the other Losers?”

Richie’s stomach twists into a knot at the very idea. “No,” he says, leaning against the counter. “God, Eddie, of course not. I would never do that.”

Eddie shrugs, looks back down at his bowl of disgusting food. 

“Eds.” Richie sighs. “I know what it’s like. To hide things. You should...you should tell them. I think it would be good for them to know, and I know they would handle it a lot better than you’re imagining. But I want you to be able to tell them yourself. When you’re ready.”

Eddie looks up again. His eyes meet Richie’s, and Richie can’t help but look away. His voice is surprisingly soft and thoughtful when he says, “Same to you.”

Richie jolts a little, like he’s been shocked. It’s the first time Eddie’s acknowledged Richie coming out to him, and he hadn’t expected to be so affected by it. He swallows thickly, and is unable to look back at him. “How’re you feeling?” he asks instead, voice a little rough. “You wanna go out for ice cream or something? Before it gets dark?”

It’s quiet for a beat, two beats too long. And then Eddie just says, “Yeah. Sure, let’s go.”

Eddie is a little stiff and shaky on his feet, but he’s determined as he gets on his shoes and jacket, even if he has to reach out and hold onto Richie’s arm so that he can bend down to shove his heel into his sneaker. Richie drinks in the warmth of the touch, and remembers the feel of him, pressed up against his entire body, when Richie was still half-asleep and not quite sure he wasn’t dreaming. It takes everything inside Richie not to pull him in, to hold him close. To feel him again. 

But Richie knows a lot about the difference between wanting something and deserving it. 

There’s an ice cream parlour just down the street, across from the park, thick with trees. It’s a cloudy day, damp with earlier rain, and even now, after the worst of winter has faded, dusk isn’t too far off. The light is low as they exit the parlour and walk along the wending path through the trees, the scent of earth and new leaves thick in Richie’s nose. Eddie shivers in his coat, and Richie watches him out of the corner of his eye, worries that he’s pushing himself too much, that he shouldn’t be out here, but Eddie’s eyes are on the sky, his shoulders hunched against the brisk breeze. 

“Ah,” Richie says softly. “Five, right? Full moon?”

Eddie glances at him, eyes skittish, and then nods. “Still an hour off.”

“Is it bad?”

Eddie shrugs, sucks fudge from his spoon. “It’s different. I’m used to it.”

Richie isn’t sure if he should ask, but he does anyway. “What does it feel like?”

Eddie swirls his spoon around his styrofoam bowl, the dregs of melted ice cream and fudge and M&Ms. “Like the wolf wants to come out, if it isn’t already. Like I want to howl at the moon, like a fucking lunatic.” His shoulders go stiff. “Like I...miss something. Or someone.”

“Who?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I don’t know.” He pauses, scrapes his thumb against the rim of his bowl. “I feel like I want to go home.”

Richie frowns. “Where, to Derry?”

“No. Not a specific place. Just...home.”

Richie swallows hard, and nods. “Yeah, I get that.”

Eddie looks at him, eyes dark under his pinched brows. “Do you ever feel that?”

Richie doesn’t answer for a few seconds as they walk, takes a moment to consider the question, because he doesn’t want to say something he doesn’t mean. He thinks Eddie deserves that. “Maybe,” he says eventually. “Sometimes I feel like I just want to feel...safe. Or.” He sniffs. “You know, for twenty, almost thirty years, I felt like I was missing something. Going back to Derry, seeing everyone. That was the closest I ever got to feeling like I had found it.”

“Do you feel like that now?”

“Kind of,” Richie says. “I think I’m getting there.”

Eddie lets the hand not holding his bowl swing, and it brushes against Richie’s. Richie wants to swallow the feeling that sweeps through him. 

“The moment of the full moon,” Eddie says, as a damp breeze blows through the trees, rustles his hair, “is when I feel the most full, like. Like I’m almost bursting out of myself. And I feel hungry.” He breathes in deep. “I feel like a monster.”

“You’re not,” Richie says, almost too quiet to be heard over the wind. 

“So you keep saying,” Eddie says on a sigh. 

Richie laughs softly. “I’ll keep saying it until you believe me.”

“What if that’s never?” 

“Then I’ll keep saying it forever,” Richie says. They walk a few steps in silence, kicking up old, dead leaves from last fall. Richie pushes his hands into his jacket pockets and says, “I know it’s not the same, but I know a little bit about feeling like you’re a monster. And that everyone would hate you if they knew what you were.”

He can feel Eddie’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t turn. The sound of their muffled footfalls is loud, seeming to echo off the trees. 

Eddie’s elbow bumps into his arm. “You got any tips?”

Richie snorts. “Nope.” And then, “Telling one person has been a good start.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Maybe.”

Richie breathes in the chilly city air, filtered through the leaves. “A bit harder to hate yourself when someone knows you and isn’t horrified by you.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. 

His elbow bumps Richie’s again. Richie slides his hand out of his pocket, lets it swing at his side, and his fingers tangle briefly with Eddie’s. Something snaps in the trees overhead, and Eddie pulls his hand away to hold onto his ice cream bowl like he’s scared someone’s about to steal it, but the warmth of his fingers is already spreading up Richie’s arm. He says, “Let’s head home?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, tired and lovely in the low light. “Let’s go home.”

🌕

“You’re not staying here.”

Eddie feels like he’s said it a thousand times, lying now on the couch with his eyes closed, trying to breathe deep and even against the feeling pushing out against his chest, thrumming through his veins. 

Richie leans against the doorframe stubbornly—Eddie is viscerally aware of his presence, the scent of him in the room, can practically hear the rhythm of his heartbeat. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“I’ve been alone nearly every time it’s happened,” Eddie reminds him. 

“You shouldn’t have to be.”

“I shouldn’t have to worry about killing my best friend in cold blood on top of everything else,” Eddie says. 

Richie’s quiet for a second, and something stupid inside Eddie second-guesses calling himself Richie’s best friend. As if it’s too presumptuous, even though Richie’s the one who’s been saying it. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe he’d take it back if he could. 

But Richie just says, “I’ll stay in the next room.”

“A fucking door won’t stop the wolf if it gets hungry,” Eddie spits. 

Richie seems unfazed by his tone. “The wolf had a chance to eat me last night and it didn’t, so I think you’re fine.”

“Just because a wild animal doesn’t attack you one day doesn’t mean it won’t the next.”

“That’s why I’ll be in the next room,” Richie says. 

Eddie sighs, and then groans as a violent shiver wracks him. The wolf is preparing to burst through his skin, and it won’t happen for another hour, maybe two, but even the wait is painful. It’s nothing compared to when it will actually happen. “Rich, I don’t want to have to fight you. I have enough shit to deal with.”

“Then let me stay,” Richie says, and his voice is tinged with something like desperation. 

And Eddie is so tired. And despite everything, he doesn’t want to be alone. 

“Fine,” he says, jaw tight. “But you won’t come into my room. No matter what. Do you understand me? Not even if you think I’m dead in there. You will not come in.”

Richie hesitates for a moment, and then says, “Deal.”

“Repeat back to me what you will not do.”

Richie snorts softly. “I won’t come into your room.”

“No matter what.”

“No matter what.”

“You won’t open the door. You won’t make any loud noises. You won’t draw attention to yourself. Understand?”

“I understand.”

Eddie opens his eyes, seeks out Richie’s form in the falling light. This close to the full moon, his sight in the dark is better than it would usually be, the edges of Richie’s silhouette are crisper. The nervous fidgeting of Richie’s hand against his sleeve is almost unbearably conspicuous. Eddie knows his eyes are probably glowing. “I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either.”

Eddie’s lips twitch up. “Don’t make me regret this.”

“By what, dying?”

Eddie’s stomach twists. “I meant by doing something stupid. But yeah, don’t die.”

Richie meets his gaze steadily. “I won’t.”

Eddie swallows hard and closes his eyes again. “You better fucking not.”

Night continues to fall, and Richie paces in a way that drives Eddie absolutely crazy, but is also weirdly, obnoxiously comforting. It’s just...it’s nice, for once, to not be forced to deal with this completely on his own. It’s nice to know he’s not alone. 

He hears Martin meow at Richie in the kitchen, and before Eddie can remind him to make sure Martin is locked in the bathroom, he hears him say, “This isn’t for you, Mitzy. Here, you can help me bring it to him.”

“What are you bringing me,” Eddie says, and his teeth are already aching, feeling too big for his mouth even before the transformation has begun to take place. 

“Just a little extra boost before werewolf time,” Richie says, and lifts one of Eddie’s hands to wrap around a hot mug. 

Eddie had assumed Richie was heating up leftovers for himself or something, but he breathes in the rich scent of beef broth and opens his eyes just as Richie reaches for Eddie’s other hand, brings it up to join the first around his biggest mug, full of steaming liquid. Eddie’s fingers tremble under Richie’s touch. 

“Where do you even find this stuff in my house?” Eddie asks dumbly, the scent of it making his jaw throb with hunger. 

“It’s literally just broth from concentrate,” Richie says. “I added a few spices for you, though. It’s actually pretty tasty. Figured it might be comforting. Or something.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says faintly, breathing in the steam. 

He’s in the middle of taking a sip from it when Martin jumps up onto the couch next to him, nearly making him drop the mug in surprise. Martin meows and tries to force his face between Eddie’s and the cup. 

“What the fuck,” Eddie says. 

“What?” Richie says, hovering nearby. 

“Martin hates me,” Eddie says. “He _hates_ me. _Especially_ on full moon.”

“Not as much as he likes food he’s not allowed to eat, apparently.”

Eddie can barely move as Martin paws at his hand and tries to push his entire head into Eddie’s mug. He pulls it away, and carefully strokes along Martin’s spine with one hand. Martin doesn’t even seem to notice, still trying to get his mouth into the broth. Eddie sips from it carefully, and it warms him down to his core. Martin licks his chin in an errant attempt to get a taste, and then licks him again, against the rough grain of his stubble. Eddie huffs a disbelieving breath. 

“He just needed a chance to get to know you,” Richie says, voice low. 

Eddie snorts, and pets Martin carefully as he drinks. 

As soon as it’s done, though, he can feel the moonlight seeping into his skin, even with the blinds drawn. His heart rate kicks up, and his breaths go fast and shallow. Richie reaches for him as he hauls himself upright, but Eddie holds up a staying hand, shakes his head. 

“Go into the bathroom,” Eddie says, making his way stiffly towards his bedroom. “Lock the door. Take Martin with you.”

“Eddie—”

“Richie,” Eddie says. “You promised.”

Richie chews on his lip, and then nods and scoops up Martin from the floor. “Take care, okay?”

“I’ve done this hundreds of times, Rich.”

“I know,” Richie says. “I just. I want you to be okay.”

Eddie’s mouth twists into a wry smile. “I won’t be. But so goes life.”

He steps into his room. Richie catches the door before it closes, and Eddie blinks once before Richie is wrapping him in a tight, breathless hug. Eddie breathes him in so deeply that it makes him dizzy. His mouth waters. His fingers grip the back of Richie’s sweater. 

And then Richie pulls away, and it’s all Eddie can do to let go. He can practically feel the fangs pushing through his gums. He backs away and closes the door. His human fingers fumble with the lock. 

After that, things go a little fuzzy. 

The shift is easier, to an extent, when Eddie is emotionally prepared. But it’s still...it’s still his body tearing itself apart and then rebuilding, and all of that pain is very, very real. As his bones snap and his muscle and sinew stretches and thickens and fur sprouts from his skin, his thoughts get smaller, simpler, and in some ways it is easier to be animal than human. But there is nothing human about the agony of your body twisting out of shape and into something new and huge and monstrous, blood matting his fur, teeth and claw cutting through skin. 

Eddie holds onto his humanity for as long as he can. He curls into himself on the floor of his bedroom and clenches his jaw against the urge to scream, and he thinks, _my name is Eddie Kaspbrak. I live in New York City. I am 40 years old. I am from Derry, Maine._ He thinks, _I am a person. I have a job. I have friends. I have Bill, and Stan, and Bev and Ben and Mike. I have Richie._

His world goes sharper and brighter, and his pained noises turn into whines, and he thinks, _Richie._

His new bones settle into place, his joints pop into place, and he thinks, _outside._

His jaw aches, and when he opens it, it’s to let out a low, plaintive howl. He can hear noises from another room, he can smell the person inside his house, inside his territory. He knows it’s Richie. It is dark and he feels weak and tired and hot with pain, and he is so hungry, absolutely aching with want, and Richie is out of reach. The moon pulls at him, calls to him, tells him to come out, to feel the earth under his feet, to lift his head to the sky. But Richie is inside. Richie is here, and Eddie cannot see him, or touch him, but he can feel him. He is close, and Eddie wants him. Eddie wants, and wants, and wants. There is a deep, yawning emptiness in him that is not quite hunger, and Eddie can remember having Richie within his grasp, tucked against his body. Safe. Eddie wants to keep him safe. 

He pushes against his door, paws at the wood. Whines, and noses at the handle. His bones ache, and exhaustion weighs on him as his skin heals over his wounds. He lies down against the door, and a howl crawls out of his throat. 

He wants Richie. He misses him, down to his marrow. 

His scent is thick around Eddie’s room. In his bed, where clothes that smell like Richie are tucked under the blankets. Eddie drags them to the door, lies down on them. Makes mournful sounds, and feels better knowing that Richie is here, Richie is safe. Eddie longs to go out, to run free, but even more, he needs to stay. He needs what is here. He needs Richie. 

Eddie loves him, so powerfully, so viscerally it shakes through him, an instinct deeper than the one that pulls him towards the moon. He curls tighter against the door, licks at the blood in his fur. He howls pathetically, and wants, and wants. He aches, and he breathes in Richie’s scent like a balm, and wishes for the steady warmth of his body, the comfort of having him not just nearby, but curled up against Eddie’s side. 

It feels like hours, an eternity before Eddie hears movement, a door opening. He presses his head against the door, and howls longingly. He flexes his jaw, paws at the door. He hears a voice make sounds that the wolf does not understand. It says, _“Eddie?”_

Eddie whines, and doesn’t know what he means, but wants him nonetheless. 

Richie doesn’t open the door, doesn’t come into the room. But he’s so close Eddie can almost taste him. He can feel the movement of the door as Richie leans against it. Eddie presses closer. 

“Eddie,” Richie says. “I’m here. I’m right here.”

The sound of his voice is soothing, even if the words are meaningless to his lupine ears. Eddie wants him, but he’s so close. He settles, and whines. 

“I’m here,” Richie says, and his weight shifts to the bottom of the door as he sits. Eddie presses into the door opposite. Just inches away. 

Eddie is so hungry, but not just in his monstrous stomach. He wants. He wants so much that it hurts. 

He presses his nose against the crack under the door, and breathes in the scent of Richie, so close, and wants. 

That’s the last thing he really remembers. 

Shifting back to human is easier than turning into a wolf. It saps the last of his strength from his worn, weary body, but it’s less painful, less violent. He is only dimly aware of the snap and pop of his bones, even as he feels the pain wrack his body, almost separate from his consciousness, as close to dissociating as Eddie is lucky enough to get through this entire process. The first trickles of sunlight are leaking through the blinds, and Eddie can feel it like pins and needles against his bare skin. His head is hazy with pain and exhaustion and hunger, his skin sticky with blood. He does not feel as human as he thinks is fair.

He lies there on the floor, shivering and only semi-conscious, until a voice filters through his fuzzy, incomprehensible thoughts. “Eddie?” it says, and Eddie makes a soft sound in response. “Eds? You in there?”

“Mmmm,” Eddie says, unable to even gather the strength to move. 

“I thought I could hear you, you know. Changing,” Richie says.

Eddie focuses on continuing to breathe despite his ribs insisting that he really would rather not. 

“Eds?” Richie says, still close, still just on the other side of the door. “Could you unlock the door? Please?”

Eddie hears him, understands him, but he can’t actually find the energy to respond. He moves his lips, but no sound comes out. He inhales, exhales, and wishes he were just a little less naked. But at least he’s inside. At least he’s not in the fucking woods. 

At least he’s not alone. 

“Eddie. Sweetheart. I’d love it if you could actually say something so I know you’re still alive.” And then, “Oh, god, I hope you didn’t hear me just call you that.”

Eddie’s lips twitch up into the shadow of a smile. He’s always exhausted, always worn out and weak after a full moon, but like this, shifting two nights in a row—he can barely even stay conscious. Still, he hears Richie talking to him, soft and concerned through the door, and eventually he musters the strength to reach up, push himself up on his elbow just enough to unlock the door. 

“Oh, thank god,” Richie says, and then immediately opens the door so quickly it hits Eddie full-force across his back. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Eddie manages to grit.

Richie is half-laughing as he says, “Oh, shit, sorry, I’m so sorry, I assumed you would have moved, god, nice one Trashmouth, just fucking hit the guy while he’s down and...very naked.”

Eddie groans and tries to curl into a tiny ball on the floor. 

“Okay, come on,” Richie says, crouching next to him, laying a conscientious hand on his bare shoulder. “Let’s get you up and...clothed. And into bed.”

“It,” Eddie says thickly, and then has to stop and take a breath before he can finish, _“literally_ hurts for you to touch me.”

Richie’s hand is snatched away, and Eddie is glad, because his skin feels raw and hypersensitive, but he also misses it, viscerally. 

In the end, though, he does need Richie’s help to sit up, and Richie hands him a pair of clean boxers, old and worn soft. Eddie tugs them on in slow, laborious jerks, and then lets Richie half-lead, half-pull him onto his bed. Eddie hits his mattress dragging in shallow, hissing breaths, ribs aching and head pounding. 

“You okay?” Richie asks, hovering next to him. Eddie is vaguely aware that he must be tired, too. That he stayed up most of the night on the other side of that door, and that he didn’t sleep much the night before either. And he didn’t nap in between like Eddie did, too busy making Eddie soup and fucking...taking care of him. 

Eddie swallows thickly and manages a nod. 

“Should I— I mean, do you want me to leave? My flight’s not for a few hours yet, but if you want I can fuck off, or.”

He cuts himself off, and Eddie bites his tongue, breathes through the sickening feeling of a wound somewhere closing up. “No,” he croaks, because he hurts, and he’s tired, and he’s cold, and he’s so fucking sick of being alone. “Stay.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, so quickly that Eddie knows it was already on the tip of his tongue. “Yeah. Of course.”

Eddie feels himself relax, and turns his face into his pillow, stretches his aching jaw and his stiff fingers. He’s still covered in blood, and he’ll have to wash his sheets in the morning. He can’t find it in him to give a single fuck. 

All he cares about right now is how soft his bed is, the way his comforter rubs against his tender skin, and the scent of Richie nearby, standing there, so close but not close enough. He’s just...watching Eddie, waiting maybe. Eddie cringes, and swallows again, and says, “Just get in the fucking bed.”

For a moment there’s no response and Eddie worries that he might have made the wrong assumption, but then Richie is climbing into bed with him, clambering over his feeble body to curl against his back. Close but only touching where Richie’s knees bump into the backs of his legs, where his hand rests carefully on Eddie’s hip, only partially overlapping with the waistband of his boxers. It would be weird, Eddie thinks, maybe, if he was physically or emotionally capable of feeling anything other than sheer, blinding exhaustion. So instead it’s just...it is what it is. It’s two bodies close together, sharing heat, giving and taking comfort in equal parts. He feels Richie’s body go lax. Eddie resists the urge to turn over and bury his face in Richie’s neck. God, but he wants to. 

There’s a meow from the doorway, and then movement. Martin jumps onto the bed next to Eddie, and picks his way across the mattress. He finds a spot against the tops of Eddie’s thighs and curls up. Richie reaches across him to pat Martin’s head, and then returns his hand to Eddie’s waist. Eddie soaks in warmth and shivers.

He passes out after that, hard and fast. The next time he wakes up, it’s brighter in his room, and Richie is shifting closer to him, pressing up against his back, tucking his face into Eddie’s shoulder. It feels good. It feels so good. Martin stretches. Eddie falls back asleep. 

And then he’s waking up again to the sound of Richie’s phone alarm, and Richie is peeling himself away, shushing Eddie vaguely, telling him to go back to sleep. He’s standing next to Eddie’s bed, and smoothing Eddie’s hair back from his forehead, and saying he has to go. He disappears, and then comes back again, duffel in hand. 

“You’re okay?” he asks. “I can stay, if you need me.”

Eddie manages to shake his head. Richie’s pulled the curtains shut, so it’s dim in his room, like twilight. He has no idea what time it is, but everything feels sleepy and warm and close and safe. He wants Richie back. 

“Okay,” Richie says. “I’ll call you later. Okay?”

Eddie hums his understanding. Richie is next to his bed again. He’s stroking Eddie’s hair back again, and Eddie wonders if he made Richie do it through sheer force of wishful thinking. He inhales, and like a breath, Richie draws nearer. Eddie almost thinks he dreams the soft touch of his lips against his forehead. His breath gets stuck in his chest. 

“Okay,” Richie says. “Forget I did that. Bye.”

And then he’s gone. Eddie sighs, and rolls over to the spot on the bed that still smells like Richie, and wants him. 


	4. Chapter 4

Going back to normal life fucking sucks.

Richie doesn’t hear back from Eddie much on that first day, as he flies out to a show he doesn’t want to do and talks to people he doesn’t really care about. He hates the oppressive silence of doing things alone, even if people are talking around him, _to_ him. He hates not being able to turn and talk to Eddie, to crack a joke about a shirt he just saw someone wearing at the airport, to complain about the fancy-ass water they give him at the venue that tastes worse than normal water.

He texts Eddie when his flight lands, and then again about the airport shirt, and the fancy water. Because he’s pathetic, and because he wants Eddie to text him back. He wants to know if he’s okay. And because he misses him.

He finally gets a response around midday, when, presumably, Eddie wakes up from his dead sleep.

 **Eddie**  
_Wow I’m so sorry about your water plight that must be so hard for you. Cannot imagine anything worse than having to drink water that costs $6 a bottle. Proud of you for not giving up._ _I’m still alive by the way_

Richie grins, and hunches over his phone in his cramped green room, ignoring the very late lunch someone brought him.

 **Richie**  
_Your silence on the matter of the shirt is deafening_

He gets a response half an hour later, and hopes that means Eddie was taking a shower or something. Not that Richie is allowed to think about Eddie taking showers. That’s one of his rules.

 **Eddie**  
_I’m practicing establishing healthy boundaries_

 **Richie**  
_And one of them is refusing to laugh at my very good and mature jokes?_

 **Eddie**  
_Yes. Please respect this._

 **Richie**  
_This is a safe space for you_

He doesn’t get a reply to that, even after he gives in and eats his boring lunch. He’s not sure if it’s because Eddie passed out again, or if Richie struck a nerve, or if maybe the conversation is just over. He doesn’t...know how to talk to Eddie, anymore. Not in this new, confusing context.

He doesn’t get another text until that night, after he’s finished his show and is headed to his hotel.

 **Eddie**  
_Just gonna come right out and say it_  
_Being a werewolf fucking sucks ass_  
🔪

Richie laughs helplessly at the emoji, but the admission also makes something deep and painful open up in his chest. If he had to guess, Eddie probably hasn’t ever said something like this, to anyone, ever. He can’t imagine his mom would have taken it well, and by association, neither would Myra. And no one else has ever known. But he’s telling Richie, now. He can tell Richie.

 **Richie**  
_Still alive then?_

 **Eddie**  
_Unfortunately_  
_And for a certain value of “alive”_

Richie bites back a smile, and his thumbs hover over his phone screen, hesitant.

 **Richie**  
_Sorry I had to leave_

 **Eddie**  
_You don’t have to apologize_  
_Sorry for bringing it up_

 **Richie**  
_Dude, no_  
_Complain all you want_  
_Like I think you’ve earned the right_

 **Eddie**  
_How did I earn it_  
_By being pathetic?_

 **Richie**  
_No, by being a fucking werewolf_  
_And for not being able to talk about it for thirty-five years_

 **Eddie**  
_I chose not to_

Richie has to laugh at that, at the absurdity of Eddie insisting, yesterday, that it was impossible for him to tell anyone, and now beating himself up about the fact that it was his own choice.

 **Richie**  
_Fuck off_  
_I wish you had been able to talk to me, or to the others, or to anyone_  
_But it’s not your fucking fault for not being able to and you know it_

He bites his lip and adds, _Secrets are fucking hard. I get it._

It takes a while for Eddie to respond. Richie is getting into the hotel elevator by the time his phone buzzes again.

 **Eddie**  
_Yeah. I guess._  
_Join the Lifelong Crippling Secrets Club_

Richie manages a small, faltering smile.

 **Richie**  
_I don’t think mine’s really on the same level_

 **Eddie**  
_I don’t think you get to decide that_

Richie huffs a laugh, thinks about his response during the twenty-second elevator ride up to his floor, the walk to his room. He chews his lip raw, cleans his glasses, stares at his phone screen. Sucks in a deep breath. _Eddie,_ he types out, and then breathes through the squeezing fear as he sends, _I’m gay._

There’s something terrifying about not only saying it, but saying it to someone. Saying it in those words. And writing them out, having the bold, clear evidence of it right there in front of him, unretractable. He kind of wants to throw up.

He worries that Eddie will say _I know._ Or that he’ll say _I always knew._ Or that he’ll make a joke, or apologize, or. Richie doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what he _wants._ And that scares him.

 **Eddie**  
_Thanks for telling me_  
_I mean it_

Richie’s eyes go hot, and he has to wipe them roughly with his sleeve.

 **Eddie**  
_You can tell me anything_  
_I think we’ve reached that point_

Richie snorts inelegantly.

 **Richie**  
_Same to you_  
_If you have any other huge secrets you’re willing to share I’m all ears_

 **Eddie**  
_You fucking wish_  
_I’m gay_

And Richie knew that, but it still feels like a punch to the stomach, somehow.

 **Richie**  
_Feel good to say it?_

 **Eddie**  
_Yeah_

 **Richie**  
_Me too_  
_Thanks for not hating me_

 **Eddie**  
_Rich_

 **Richie**  
_I know. I’m just saying. Thanks._

 **Eddie**  
_Yeah. You too._

Richie lies down on his bed, heart squeezing. He types out, _Thanks for letting me know you._ He almost doesn’t send it. He isn’t sure he’s going to until he hits the button and it pops up in their chat log.

 **Eddie**  
_You’re welcome. It’s terrifying._

 **Richie**  
_Tell me about it_

The next week is...weird. Richie is moving around a lot, with a few different gigs in different cities and not enough time to go home in between, but instead of his days revolving around when he needs to be on set and onstage, his days are spent texting Eddie, or thinking about texting Eddie, or waiting for a response from Eddie. They talk about dumb shit, mostly. Richie can’t stop texting Eddie every single half-interesting thought that pops into his head, just to see if he can get a response. And Eddie keeps surprising him, over and over.

Eddie is different, now, than he was before Richie knew. Not just in terms of openly complaining about recovering from two back-to-back transformations and other wacky werewolf shit, but just. He’s less distant. Less reserved, less standoffish. And that makes sense, because Richie _knows_ what it’s like to have a secret you think will kill you. It’s hard to be close to people. Harder than he even realized, before he told Eddie his own.

But he’s different in other ways, too. Looser, somehow. Like he no longer needs to watch everything he says, and overthink it ad nauseum. Or maybe Richie’s projecting. But Eddie is funny over text, bitingly sarcastic, doesn’t take shit and gives as good as he gets. He gets worked up about stupid shit, and he always says _you’re so not funny,_ and finally, finally Richie is seeing the Eddie he knew as a kid. And Richie missed him so, so much. And he still misses him, because they’re miles and hours apart, and it’s the _worst._

Not everything is magically better, of course. They still have missteps, learning each other again. Sometimes Eddie doesn’t answer for hours and Richie never knows whether to push it or to back off and give him space. He never knows if he said the wrong thing, or if he just shouldn’t have said anything. 

Once, Eddie says, _You don’t have to do this._

 **Richie**  
_What?_

 **Eddie**  
_Talk to me. I don’t know. Pity me. If that’s what you’re doing._  
_You don’t have to feel obligated._

 **Richie**  
_Eddie_  
_Fuck off_  
_I want to. You’re my best friend. I miss you._  
_And you’re more fun to bother than Stan_

 **Eddie**  
_I knew it_

So things are mostly okay. 

Richie spends his days talking to Eddie, and he spends his nights missing him, closing his eyes and remembering the warmth of his skin pressed up against him after his second shift, the weight of his hand in Richie’s, the soft sound of his voice, the crooked tilt of his smile. It’s pathetic. It’s maybe a little dangerous. Letting himself think about it so much. But he can’t stop himself, has never been able to stop himself. Has always felt this deep, unbearable pull towards Eddie, a wanting that makes him feel crazy.

They talk about the gay thing, a little more. Richie’s trying to be more honest, because he knows Eddie is trying to do the same. Richie says, _I knew since we were kids._ He says, _I was so scared of you finding out._ He says, _I lied about the werewolf thing._

 **Eddie**  
_What werewolf thing_

 **Richie**  
_I told you Pennywise turned into a werewolf_  
_Back then_  
_I lied_

 **Eddie**  
_oh_

 **Richie**  
_Do you remember?_

 **Eddie**  
_Of course I fucking remember, Richie_  
_I thought about it every single day of my fucking life_

It makes Richie sick to think about it.

 **Richie**  
_I’m sorry_  
_I had no idea it would mean anything to you_  
_You know I would never have said it if I knew_

 **Eddie**  
_I know_

 **Richie**  
_If it helps, that clown was a homophobic BITCH to me_

 **Eddie**  
_It does not help_  
_I’m sorry_

 **Richie**  
_Clown trauma am I right_  
_God we need therapy_

 **Eddie**  
_So much fucking therapy_

 **Richie**  
_I’m sorry for making you think I’d be scared of you_  
_I was only ever scared of myself_

 **Eddie**  
_Join the fucking club_

Richie types out, _I love you,_ and then erases it. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last.

After another weekend of shows in Chicago and then Indianapolis, Richie is finally free to head back to California, which is nice apart from the fact that it’s so fucking far away from New York. He’s happy to be back in his home, and back in warm, sunny weather. And he’s happy to be back at brunch with Bev again, drinking mimosas on the patio, eating french toast. 

“So,” she says, chewing on the end of her straw and looking at Richie through her enormous sunglasses. “Tell me more about Eddie.”

Richie immediately feels defensive, even though this is Bev and he understands what she’s actually asking. Still, Richie is holding more secrets than just his own, now. “He’s...good. I think we really, you know, connected and shit.”

Bev purses her lips. “You’re being weird,” she says, and kicks him under the table. “Stop being weird. Did something happen?”

“Between me and Eddie?” Richie practically yelps. 

“Okay, that’s not what I meant, but now you’re making me feel like the answer is yes.”

Richie forces a laugh that he thinks comes off as less-than-manic. “What could have possibly happened?”

“Well, I don’t know, Richie, why don’t you tell me?”

Richie laughs again, and shakes his head, and starts to understand why Eddie thought the best course of action was to just never get close to any of them. God, why did he think this would be fine? “No, no, I mean it. I’m just being...fucking weird.”

“You can say that again,” Bev says, eyebrows arched. 

“I’m sorry. It’s been a long two weeks.” Richie shrugs, resigned. 

Bev watches him steadily for another few long seconds, and then she says, “Alright, keep your secrets.”

“I think I will!” Richie says. “Really, though, Eddie was...good. The first few days were weird, but. We had some good talks. I think he’s gonna be okay.”

Bev plucks a slice of kiwi from her plate and takes a delicate bite. “Am I to assume you can’t go into detail?”

Richie shrugs ruefully. “I don’t want to, like, share things he told me in confidence.”

“No, of course. Just.” Bev sighs. “Is there anything we can do? To support him better, or make him feel more comfortable?”

Richie hums and traces a shape in spilled syrup with the tine of his fork. “I don’t know. Just...I think it’s been hard for him to trust people, all this time. I think he just needs time—and gentle persistence—to realize this is different, _we’re_ different.” He taps a rhythm against his plate. “I just think, you know, historically when people have told him they want what’s best for him, it hasn’t been true.”

Bev nods. “Yeah...that makes sense. You’re strangely perceptive, did you know that?”

Richie snorts. “I can tell you very confidently that I am not.”

“I think you have your moments,” Bev says with a smile. And then, “I love you, you know? Even if you’re keeping secrets from me.”

Richie bites his tongue. He looks across the table at Bev, who is smiling and patient and wonderful. His tongue feels like lead in his mouth. His stomach turns. “Bev?”

“Mm?”

Oh, god. He feels like he’s going to pass out. “I’m gay.”

Bev blinks a few times. She holds out her hand. Numbly, Richie takes it. “Oh, Richie,” she says, and her voice is a little wobbly. “Can I give you a hug?”

Richie nods. Bev stands and pulls him to his feet, and then steps in and wraps her arms around him, right there on the patio of their favourite diner. Richie forgot to even think about the fact that they’re in public, even if there’s no one sitting nearby. He’s not thinking about it now—his brain is mostly white noise, and his eyes are getting hot and wet. He leans into her, and she hugs him tight and presses a kiss to his shoulder. 

“I love you so much,” she says, fiercely. “I love you so much and I’m so— I’m so happy and proud.”

Richie laughs a little, and cries, and hugs her for a long time before he can step away and sit down again without dripping tears into his french toast. 

Bev sniffles and dabs under her eyes with a napkin. “So,” she says, clearing her throat. “Can I assume that’s why you were being cagey about Eddie?”

Richie cringes. “Is it super obvious?”

“I just meant that I figured you must have told him, or he found out,” Bev says. “But to be honest, my next question was going to be: Eddie?”

Richie snorts, more tired than amused. “Yeah,” he says, and shrugs. “Eddie.”

Bev hums. “I won’t say it doesn’t make sense.”

Richie cracks a smile. “I really. I just.” He sighs. “Anyway. I’m not emotionally ready to discuss it yet. Nothing actually happened, or anything. I just. He knows about me, but not that I. Yeah.”

“Gotcha. Conversation over.” Bev mimes zipping her lips, and then turns back to her smoked salmon bagel. “But I’m always here for you, okay? If you ever _do_ want to talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Richie says, and feels lighter than he has in a long time.

🌕

In hindsight, Eddie should have expected the nightmares.

He used to have them a lot, as a kid. Horrible, gruesome visions that plagued him nightly, dreams of him bursting out of his skin in the middle of the day, the wolf taking over his mind, forced to watch helplessly as he tore his friends apart. They lessened over time, and bother him less now, but they never leave him completely. Even when they were pushed to the side by new dreams, different dreams of clowns and all those dead kids, his werewolf nightmares lingered, always ready to creep back up on him as soon as he thought he’d escaped them.

Eddie’s never hurt a human. He’s never bitten anyone, never attacked anything other than a hapless squirrel, the odd rabbit. But in his dreams, he’s a killer.

In the week after the full moon, in the week after Richie leaves, he feels _good._ He feels like maybe things are better, like things will _be_ better for him. He sometimes thinks Richie might be pitying him, or that he’ll wake up one day and realize how fucked up it is that he’s friends with a werewolf, but every day Richie’s name is flashing across his phone screen, complaining about the sun being up too early in California, or how he misses Martin. And Eddie keeps replying, keeps opening up a little more, bit by bit. So he thinks things might, for the first time in his life, be looking up for him.

And then he closes his eyes, and the night creeps in, and the waning moon finds him, and all he can see is blood, and his own claws, stained red. And all he feels is that sick, insatiable hunger, and his teeth piercing skin and flesh. Eddie’s never bitten anyone, but the sense memory is so visceral, the way his fangs sink into soft muscle, the way his jaw locks, the flavour of blood coating his tongue. His vision goes red, and he shakes, and shakes, and shakes, and the body caught between his jaws goes limp. The grass is wet and sticky and dark, and Eddie keeps shaking, thrashes his huge head back and forth. 

He drops the body, and it’s Richie, of course it’s Richie. He’s dead, and then he’s not, staring up into Eddie’s eyes, and he is terrified. His eyes are wide in the moonlight. His body is mangled and he is bleeding out. And Eddie knows that Richie wants to die, because he doesn’t want to become the monster in front of him. He wants Eddie to kill him. He opens his mouth to ask, but blood bubbles out, and he can’t form words. And Eddie wants to kill him, too, but he can’t until Richie says it, god, why won’t he just say it? Why won’t he just ask?

He says, _“Eddie,”_ his voice raw and cracked and gasping, and blood drips from his red lips.

Eddie wakes up with a jolt, shaking so hard his bones hurt. Martin grumbles from the foot of his bed, where he now sleeps almost as often as he sleeps in his own bed. Eddie feels like he needs to throw up, but he’s stiff with horror, and scared to open his eyes, scared that his hands will be stained with blood, that his floor will be soaked with it, that the past week will have been a dream and that Richie never left his house alive.

He finally reaches out from the relative safety of his blankets, finds his phone on his bedside table, ducks under the covers with it as if that can protect him from reality. His screen is blindingly bright. It tells him, in glaring numbers, that it’s 4 in the morning. He has no notifications, which is rare these days. He wets his lips, trembling, and opens his texts.

He can see, there, the evidence of his conversations with Richie. Just inane, pointless shit, most of the time. Eddie misses him so badly it’s painful.

For the first time in over a month, he opens his voicemails, hands shaking. He lets his only saved voicemail play. _“Hey, Spaghetti Man.”_

Eddie draws a tremulous breath and whispers, “Hey.”

It’s not the same as hearing him in real time, alive and whole. It’s not the same as _seeing him,_ as waking up and him _being there._ Eddie wants him there more than anything in the world. But he also can’t quite stomach the thought of it. Feels like the scent of him, the warm thrum of his blood, might make him sick. So he just listens to that voicemail, over and over, and it takes the edge off of the horror that’s sunk into his marrow.

 _He’s alive,_ he tells himself, over and over, letting the low timbre of Richie’s voice wash over him. _He’s alive, he’s okay. He knows what you are. He isn’t scared of you._

He swallows thickly, and remembers the feeling of his teeth sinking into flesh, and thinks, _he should be._

Things are harder again, after that. Eddie tries not to make it obvious, but it’s hard to talk to Richie normally when all he can think about is the way his blood tastes in his mouth, the rattled sounds of his last breaths. Eddie has a variation on the same nightmare almost every day for a week, and in every single one, he sees Richie’s terrified eyes, so familiar from their time in Derry, and he smells his warm blood, and every time, it’s his fault. Every time, Eddie isn’t able to keep him safe. And Richie is scared of him.

It takes him five days to admit to Richie that he isn’t sleeping well, and it’s only because Richie starts asking him if he’s okay. Because of course Richie can tell. It takes another two days for Eddie to finally mention the nightmares.

 _You should have told me,_ Richie says. _I thought we were doing more of that._

Eddie bites his tongue and says, _I’m sorry._

 **Richie**  
_No, you don’t have to apologize_  
_I should have said: I wish you had felt like you could tell me_

 **Eddie**  
_What would you have done?_

 **Richie**  
_I don’t know_  
_Flown to New York to hold your hand?_

Eddie knows it’s a joke, but he wants it so badly that it makes him want to howl at the fucking moon or something. And at the same time, there’s nothing he wants _less._ Texting is good. _Distance_ is good. If Richie is in California, Eddie can’t hurt him. Not physically, at least.

 **Eddie**  
_Martin is doing a pretty good job_  
_He sleeps in my bed almost every night now_

 **Richie**  
_I MISS HIM!!!!!_  
_Give Martin a kiss for me_

 **Eddie**  
_No_  
_I value my life_

 **Richie**  
_Your myriad close brushes with death tell me otherwise_

 **Eddie**  
_Ha. You got me there._

 **Richie**  
_I value your life enough for both of us_

And Eddie doesn’t know what to fucking say to _that._

But in all honesty, being alone is harder, now. That’s one thing he’s noticed since Richie left. He’d thought he was getting better at it before, at the daily routines of living on his own, taking care of himself and his cat, every day steeped in silence and his own thoughts. But now that he knows how it can be different—now that he’s had Richie waiting for him when he gets home from work, now that he knows the soothing hum of someone else’s voice filtering through the walls, the loneliness hits harder. His house feels empty without Richie in it.

 _Eddie_ feels empty, without Richie beside him.

His clothes don’t smell like him anymore, either. Eddie still has them in his bed, wears them around the house. It doesn’t help, but he can’t stop himself. Richie hasn’t asked about his missing shirts.

Richie hasn’t asked about anything, actually, in close to twenty hours. Not that Eddie is counting. But it’s just weird, is all, because usually Richie is texting him pointless shit all day, from the moment he wakes up, and Eddie has just sort of gotten used to that. It’s not like Eddie _expects_ him to, not in the way that like...Richie _should_ be texting him. It’s just noticeable. That he isn’t.

The silence is deafening, in Eddie’s empty house. It’s a Friday evening, so he doesn’t even have work to distract him anymore, coworkers who might try to chat with him when he walks past their cubicles. It’s just him and Martin, sitting on the couch, and the house is so quiet. And Eddie thinks, _this is what is necessary._ He thinks, _this is what you deserve._

Not for the first time in his life, Eddie sends up a huge Fuck You to that werewolf that bit him 35 years ago. And he swears, once again, to never let that werewolf be him.

“It’d be worth it, wouldn’t it?” he asks Martin, who is sitting curled up on the couch next to him, pressed against his thigh. “To be alone forever if it meant never making anyone else deal with the same shit?”

Martin blinks at him slowly. Eddie knows that in cats that’s supposed to communicate affection, but coming from Martin it mostly communicates apathy at best, and flat-out contempt at worst.

“I’m going to trade you in for a cat who actually loves me,” Eddie lies.

There’s a knock at his door. Eddie blinks.

It happens again before he can actually gather the wherewithal to stand up and go to the door. He breathes in deep before he opens it, even though this close to the new moon his senses are duller than they are close to a shift. His heart skips a beat.

He pulls the door open, and there’s fucking Richie, hands in his pockets, wearing a little, rueful grin. “Surprise?”

“What,” Eddie says.

“Hi.” Richie’s crooked smile is so fucking gorgeous it makes Eddie furious.

He swallows thickly. “What the fuck?”

Richie doesn’t answer, and instead takes half a step closer. Eddie doesn’t even fully think about what he’s doing before he’s lifting his arms, and Richie is stepping into them to hug him.

It feels so good that it makes Eddie’s eyes burn. He buries his face in Richie’s shoulder, and trembles a little, breathing him in, holding him as tight as he can. The warmth of him is intoxicating, and Eddie can’t get close enough. He sinks into it, and revels in the tight squeeze of Richie’s strong arms around him.

Richie exhales, and starts to pull away. Eddie makes an unconscious sound he’s instantly embarrassed about, but Richie only backs away a few inches, curls his hands around Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie sways inwards automatically, magnetically, and Richie’s eyes flick to his before they close. Their foreheads touch, and it pulls a breath from Eddie’s lungs, tremulous and pained.

“Hi,” he breathes, because he feels like if he doesn’t break the silence he might do something insane.

“Hi,” Richie says again.

Eddie’s eyes flutter open, and Richie is so close to him, his breath on Eddie’s mouth. It makes him shiver with something like anticipation, and something like hunger. He hears the way Richie’s throat bobs. Eddie wants him so badly it scares him.

“So,” says a voice from the front entrance, “are we allowed to come in, or has Eddie locked us out?”

Eddie jerks back, out of Richie’s embrace. Bev is standing in the entryway, grinning, eyebrows raised. Eddie gapes.

“Hi Eddie,” says Stan, poking his head over her shoulder. “Long time no see.”

“What the fuck?” Eddie says.

“Surprise!” Bev sings. “We came to visit you.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Eddie says dumbly. “Is everyone here?”

“No, it’s just us three,” Richie says, stepping away from Eddie’s personal space. Eddie misses him instantly.

“For now,” Stan adds. “The others couldn’t get off until tomorrow, so they’ll be flying out in the morning. Unless, of course, you tell us all to fuck off and we’ll tell them to cancel their flights.”

Eddie gapes at them for another second, and then he says, “No, no, fuck, come in. Uh, welcome. Why are you here?”

Bev rolls her eyes, grinning wide. “Because we missed you, moron. And we were all jealous that Richie got to see you, but we didn’t.”

Eddie’s eyes flash hot, and he blinks them quickly. “Yeah,” he says, and hopes his voice doesn’t come out weird. “I missed you all, too.”

“Weird way of showing it,” Bev teases, and then steps in to wrap her arms around him, squeezing him tight. 

The contact makes Eddie want to cry. He’s spent so much time alone these past nine months, with the exception of a couple short trips to see the Losers, and Richie had been so surprisingly tactile during his week with Eddie. And Eddie hadn’t realized quite how much he missed that, how much he missed _touching people._

He’s remembering, now, as he soaks in Bev’s warmth, her open affection, and then Stan’s as well as he takes her place. He knows he probably looks as ragged and tired and pathetic as he feels, sleep-deprived and worn down, but he doesn’t mind as long as it means his friends are willing to hold onto him like this, strong arms wrapped around him, faces pressed into his shoulder. 

God, he’s fucking missed everyone. 

They retreat into his apartment, squeeze onto the couch, thigh-to-thigh. They could pull up a chair from the kitchen, but nobody does, and Eddie relishes the warmth of his spot, pinned between Richie’s broad shoulder and Stan’s bony elbow. He hadn’t been aware, consciously, that this was something he wanted, but now he never wants to leave.

“So, Eddie Spaghetti,” Bev says, squished between the arm of the couch and Richie’s hip, turned to the side with her legs across Richie’s lap. “What have you been up to? You never update us in the group chat!”

Eddie glances at Richie, wonders how much he’s told them about him, about...not about his secrets, of course, but about his _life._ Richie looks right back at him, patient and curious. “Um, not much,” Eddie hedges. “I just, like, work. And watch TV with Martin.”

“The cat!” Bev says. “Richie told me you had a cat.”

“He’s not mine,” Eddie says automatically, but immediately Bev and Richie are springing up from the couch to go look for him, drag him out from under Eddie’s bed. “Maybe don’t do that!” Eddie calls to them. “He’s not very—”

But already Bev is returning with an armful of wiggly pink cat in her arms, and while Martin doesn’t look particularly happy about the kisses being pressed to the top of his head, he’s not even yowling.

“Well, what the fuck,” Eddie says. “Every day he tells me to die, huh.”

Richie laughs, sitting back down next to him, letting Bev return to her spot.

“I’m surprised you got a cat, honestly,” Stan says, reaching across Eddie and Richie to rub over Martin’s back. “I feel like I remember every cat in Derry absolutely hating you.”

Eddie frowns. “They do,” he says. “He does.”

“He does _not,”_ Richie says, too loud, like he’s trying to convince Eddie, or maybe Martin himself. “Eddie’s always deciding for himself how people feel about him.”

Eddie cuts a glare at him, and Richie grins back, sunny as always.

“Well, maybe he hates you because you don’t take care of his nails for him,” Bev says, inspecting one of Martin’s claws. “Look at these things, they’re razors.”

“You should see _Eddie’s_ nails,” Richie says, and snags Eddie’s hand before he can even react, hauling it across his lap to show Bev.

“Hey,” he protests, trying to tug it back.

 _“Eddie,”_ Bev gasps. “What have you been doing to your poor cuticles?”

Stan picks up Eddie’s other hand to inspect it. “Fuck, Eds, this is a warzone.”

“Shut up,” Eddie grumbles, “it’s a bad habit.”

Within seconds, Bev has whipped a nail file out from her purse, and Richie has found the cat nail trimmer Eddie can never use without being mauled, and Eddie is getting his ragged nails smoothed and buffed by a very patient Stan while Bev and Richie work on Martin’s claws.

“This is nice,” Eddie says flatly. “Exactly what I expected when my friends barged into my house on a Friday night.”

“You should try not to bite your nails so much,” Stan says, ignoring him. “Isn’t that, like, a hygiene nightmare?”

“Yes, thank you, I love to be reminded,” Eddie says.

“Be nice to Eddie, he’s got anxiety,” Richie says.

 _“You_ have anxiety,” Eddie shoots back, like a child.

Richie nods in placid agreement, as do Stan and Bev.

“It comes with the childhood clown trauma, I think,” Stan says wisely.

“And the bullying,” Bev says. “And the shit parents.”

“Speak for yourself,” Richie says, “my parents were _half-decent.”_

“Wow, way to rub it in,” Stan says.

“They were a little homophobic, though,” Richie says with a wince.

Eddie licks his lips quickly, glances at Stan, then Bev. Richie texted him when he told Bev, but he hasn’t mentioned Stan yet. Maybe it just happened today, or maybe Stan just...already knew, in his quiet, all-knowing way, but either way, he doesn’t visibly react, just nods understandingly, filing Eddie’s left thumbnail with warm hands.

“You gonna tell your mom?” Bev asks, still focusing all her attention on Martin’s hind claws.

Richie shrugs, and says, “I dunno. Maybe, one day. Probably before she dies.”

He says it so easily. Talks about it, so easily. And Eddie knows it probably _isn’t_ easy, that it probably terrifies him to say it, can feel how tense his shoulders are where they’re pressed against Eddie’s, but. He says it. Out loud, in front of their closest friends.

Eddie longs for that. Just a little. More than a little.

They end up ordering in dinner, and eating out of the containers on the couch while they watch a comedy sketch that Richie will not stop referencing. It’s funny, lighthearted, and it’s nice, just sitting there eating and laughing with his friends. Richie and Bev both have big, whole-body laughs, and while Stan is more reserved, Eddie likes the way he snorts and makes snide comments and eventually gives in until his shoulders are shaking and he’s wiping tears from under his glasses. It feels good. It feels _right._

The whole night is permeated with that feeling, the warmth and rightness. Eddie feels like he’s drowning in it. Even later, when Stan and Bev say goodbye and head to their Airbnb, and Richie half-asks, half-insists he’s going to sleep on Eddie’s couch at least for tonight, that feeling lingers. 

Neither of them have moved from their spots on the couch, closer than they need to be even without Bev and Stan pressing them together. Martin is curled up on the couch just next to Richie’s thigh, so that’s his official excuse, Eddie assumes, but Eddie doesn’t have one. He just...doesn’t want to move. So he doesn’t. And it feels right. 

They both slouch back against the couch, picking at a bag of chips left over from earlier, and they’re both quiet, but it’s strangely comfortable. Eddie has always struggled with silences, always felt like they were wide-open opportunities to say something he would regret, either because it revealed too much or just because it was stupid and annoying. Eddie’s always had a problem with shutting the fuck up just to fill a silence, and he knows Richie has too, but somehow, right now, it’s easy. To just be. 

Richie slings an arm across the back of the couch, and eventually it slides down, onto Eddie’s shoulders. Eddie shudders under the contact, so simple and deliberate, and at the same time he falls into a sleepy sort of trance. He is so warm, and so relaxed, melting into the couch, his body heavy and his nerves settled. And he’ll blame it on the wolf, if anyone asks, the way he drifts closer to Richie, tucking his head against his broad shoulder as they idly watch whatever the fuck is still on TV. Everything feels very muted, very soft around the edges, like nothing outside of this room, this couch, is completely real. 

He’s embarrassed, somewhere, deep down. That he’s doing this, that he’s being so fucking obvious, needy. Richie draping a companionable arm around him is one thing—Eddie snuggling up into his side is another entirely. It’s...it’s fucking pathetic, is what it is, but at the same time he feels like he has no control over it, feels so good and safe and warm that he can’t even begin to pull away. 

Not that Richie is pulling away, either, and maybe that’s the only reason Eddie isn’t already deep in self-loathing about this. Richie is just...sitting there, letting it happen. Shifting his arm on Eddie’s shoulder to hold him close. And Eddie is giving in to it, the desire to turn his face just enough that he can rub his cheek against the fabric of Richie’s shirt, breathe in the scent of him there. 

Richie hums softly and says, voice soft, “Are you smelling me?” 

Eddie swallows thickly. “Yeah.”

“Okay.”

“It’s like—” Eddie huffs a shallow breath, but still can’t pull away. “I don’t know. A familiarity thing. You smell like—” He stops, and can’t quite get out the word, _home._ “Like Richie,” he finishes lamely. 

Richie snorts. “Yeah, I sure fucking hope so. I probably also smell like planes and B.O. and shit.”

Eddie makes a vague noise. “You do,” he says. “But mostly, here, you smell like. Richie.” He presses his nose into Richie’s shoulder again, and then lower, closer to his armpit. “It’s soothing,” he says, and then regrets it and adds, “Look, I know it’s fucking weird—”

“No, no, it’s— Okay, it’s kind of weird. But like. Whatever, man, I get it. Werewolf, scent, not a lot of people you can smell. Go nuts.”

Eddie wants to say no, is about to say _no,_ and get the fuck out of there before he does something else fucking humiliating, but Richie is tipping his head to the side and making an inviting sound, baring his _fucking_ neck, and Eddie is furious about it because he can’t resist. He makes a frustrated sound, and turns his head to tuck his face there into the crook of his neck, and Richie laughs and cradles the back of his skull gently with one huge hand as Eddie sucks in a quick, deep breath. 

It’s...not so much euphoric as it is intensely settling. It’s like breathing in the scent of your favourite home-cooked meal, but on fucking steroids. It’s the smell of his dad’s old coat, which Eddie kept for years after he died. It’s the cool scent of morning dew after a hard shift in the woods. It’s comforting, and Eddie intends to just get one good lungful and then pull away, but he just fucking _melts._ He twists and presses his body into Richie’s and pulls in these deep, steady breaths, and Richie just hums and lets him, one hand on the back of his head, the other on his hip to steady him. Eddie smushes his whole face into the crook of his neck, mouth and nose smudging over his skin, and breathes him in like he needs it to live. 

And Richie just...lets him, and lets him, and doesn’t say a fucking thing. He sits there and breathes and holds onto Eddie gently, never pulling away, never pushing back. His fingers curl into Eddie’s hair at the back of his head, and Eddie doesn’t know what that _means,_ what any of this means. All he knows is that Richie smells so good, and this feels amazing, leaning into him, feeling his warm skin against his cheek, his mouth. He breathes humidly against Richie’s throat, and Richie doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t bat an eye. He knows what Eddie is, and still he lets Eddie set his mouth right up against his jugular. He’s not scared. 

Eddie squeezes his eyes shut, lets his forehead fall to Richie’s shoulder. He has one hand braced against the couch on Richie’s other side, and he can feel Martin licking roughly over his knuckles. 

“Good?” Richie hums, scratching the back of Eddie’s head like he’s a dog. 

Eddie shivers, manages a tiny nod. Richie tips his head back to the other side, to settle his cheek against Eddie’s hair. They stay like that for a few seconds, maybe a minute, Eddie has no idea. It’s not comfortable—Eddie is all twisted and propped up half over Richie’s body—but it’s so good, too, all the places where they’re pressed together, touching. All the places Eddie can feel Richie’s skin against his own, and the scent of him still coating his throat, lulling him into this sense of calm, of comfort. His mouth waters, and he has the insane urge to press his mouth against warm skin, lick over it. 

And Eddie feels so warm. And so safe. And he loves Richie so fucking much it hurts. 

He lifts his head at the same moment that Richie drops his. Their cheeks brush, coarse stubble against stubble, a rasp of sound. Eddie turns his head, startled, and his lips touch skin. He’s not thinking, when he moves in. He moves by instinct alone, the insane urge to touch more, to—to touch better. His mouth rubs over Richie’s, not quite a kiss, but so fucking far from being anything else. 

He jerks back immediately, body flashing hot with shock and embarrassment and quiet, painful victory. He stares at Richie’s wide eyes, his slack mouth, and says, “Oh my god Rich I’m so s—”

In the space of an instant, Richie has pulled him back in, kissed _him,_ hard and quick and completely, undeniably on purpose. And then he pulls back again, and they’re just staring at each other again, both equally shocked but, arguably, equally culpable. 

Eddie is fucking gaping and he knows it. His mouth feels like it’s burning. “I. I didn’t. That wasn’t on purpose.”

Richie throat bobs. Eddie’s face is still close enough that he can hear the way it clicks. “Okay,” he says, voice a little shredded. “Yeah. Then mine wasn’t either.”

They sway towards each other, and then apart. A magnetic pull, and then repulsion. Eddie wants to laugh, an insane sound building in his throat. He chokes it down. “It’s just,” he says. “Werewolf instincts. And.”

“Sure,” Richie says. His eyes flick to Eddie’s mouth, then back up to his eyes, still wide and completely baffled. His hand has dropped from Eddie’s hip, but the other has slipped down to his neck. Eddie can feel it like a brand. 

“I never would have—” he says, head spinning. 

Richie winces visibly. “Ouch.”

“No, I mean. I’m just telling you why. I did.” 

“Are you?”

“I’m trying to.” God, this is so fucking absurd, what is _wrong_ with him? What the _fuck_ is wrong with him? 

“Okay, well.” Richie’s eyes are searching. His hand clutches at the edge of Eddie’s shirt. “If it helps, I did it because I’ve been in love with you for the entire time I’ve known you.”

Eddie’s nervous system has been through a lot of shit in his lifetime, including being rearranged twice a month for thirty-five years. He has never experienced anything quite like the mental shutdown that takes place in the face of Richie saying...Richie saying _that._ He stares, mind completely fucking blank, for so long he sees Richie’s face fall into something like despair before it flickers back to painful indifference. Eddie chokes. His jaw works. He says, “What?”

“So,” Richie says. “Yeah. I’m getting the vibe that it came from a very different urge on your end.”

“I,” Eddie says. “God. Richie.”

“Fuck, please give me something to work with, dude, you are fucking killing me,” Richie says, and he’s obviously trying to lighten the mood, but he sounds so desperate. 

Eddie is trying, _so fucking hard._ His thoughts are spinning out in a hundred directions. But all he can think about is Richie’s mouth, crushed up against his. And Richie’s eyes, bright and shining. And the way Richie’s hand feels on his neck. And the smell of him, heady, overwhelming. The sound of his pounding heart—or maybe that’s Eddie’s. 

And the way he said, _I’ve been in love with you._

In love. With Eddie. 

“Fuck,” Eddie breathes. “Can I kiss you? Again?”

Richie’s breath leaves him in a rush of air. “Yes.”

It feels like giving himself over to a wave sweeping him away, letting the current take him. He lifts his hands to Richie’s face and falls into him, lets their mouths meet for the first time in a way that is neither an accident nor something violent. And it’s. It’s fucking fireworks. Eddie exhales a wavering breath against Richie’s lips, and cradles his jaw with both hands, and brings their mouths together gently, and the feelings it sparks inside him are almost painful in intensity. He pulls away an inch, eyes closed, and licks his lips, just savouring it as his mind and body struggle to keep up with everything that’s happening, and before they can Richie is closing the space again, and again. Eddie makes a soft, pathetic sound, and Richie’s hand strokes the hair back from his forehead, just like he did that morning after the full moon. Eddie sighs and sinks into it, mouth falling open, letting Richie kiss him. _Him._ Richie is kissing him. Richie wants him. Richie loves him. 

Eddie pulls back, and it feels like ripping off a scab. “Richie,” he says, voice raw, hands still framing his beautiful fucking face. “Rich, I’m a _werewolf.”_

Richie laughs, watching him steadily. “Yeah. I know.”

Eddie’s eyes go hot, and he pulls away another inch. “Don’t laugh.”

Immediately, Richie sobers. He has a hand at Eddie’s waist, and he squeezes there, gently, grounding. He lifts his other hand from the back of Eddie’s neck to wipe a thumb under one damp eye, then the other. Fuck, Eddie didn’t want to fucking _cry._ “I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds like he really means it. “I know. Eddie. I know. I’ve seen it. I know what you are, I know... _who_ you are. I know. It doesn’t make a difference. Not to me.”

Eddie doesn’t see how it can’t, when his jaw is aching with the need to get his mouth on Richie, and he can’t guarantee it’s not partially the urge to bite him. When Eddie is not fully human, and never will be. He doesn’t see how, and he is desperate to know. “How can it not?”

Richie tips his head to the side, eyes warm and wet, and says, “It doesn’t change any of the things that made me fall in love with you.”

Eddie swallows hard, and surges forward to kiss him again before he falls to pieces. 

Richie kisses him back, hard, for a long second, his hand sliding into Eddie’s hair and holding on tight, arching into Eddie like he can’t help it. And it’s so fucking good, it’s euphoric, it’s everything Eddie has ever wanted and never, _never_ thought he would have, but then Richie’s pulling away again, breathing hard, staring at Eddie like he holds all of Richie’s secrets, including the bad ones. “Eddie,” he says, mouth red and so, so warm, so, so close. “Eds, just. Am I supposed to just assume that you have, like, similar feelings? Because I can’t—”

“Yeah,” Eddie says quickly, breathlessly. “Yes. I. Richie, I’ve been. _Living_ in a nest made of clothes that smell like you.”

Richie laughs unsteadily, searching his face. He looks as blown away by all of this as Eddie feels. “Which means?”

“I’m obsessed with you!” Eddie says, squeezing Richie’s face a little between his hands. “God, Richie, I’m. You’re the only person I trust. You’re the only person who, who makes me feel _safe.”_

“I’m the only person who knows,” Richie says. 

“It’s always been true. I’ve been.” Eddie huffs, frustrated at his fruitless search for the right words. He tries again. “I’ve been. In love with you. For a long time.”

Immediately, Richie’s eyes well up, and he pulls away to flip up his glasses, rub his hands over his eyes as he makes a whining sound in his throat. Martin looks up at him from the couch cushion and meows. Eddie’s heart squeezes, and he laughs a little, pulling back, rearranging, settling on his knees next to Richie and moving to tug his glasses away from his face. Richie holds tight to them, shakes his head, sniffles hard as he wipes his eyes again and then settles his glasses back in front of them. “Don’t,” he says, voice wobbly. “I want to fucking look at you.”

Eddie laughs again, a thin, breathless sound. He realizes for the first time that he’s shaking, still not quite able to take it all in. He reaches out on instinct, wipes away the wetness under Richie’s eyes like Richie did for him just a minute ago. For Richie, the tears don’t stop coming, and he gives up on trying to make them. Eddie loves him so much. 

“Hey,” he says, framing Richie’s face again, turning it to look at him. 

Richie meets his gaze, eyes shining, and says, “Hey.”

Eddie smiles, heart rabbiting, and leans back in. Like the tide, Richie surges back up to meet him. 

The kiss is gentle, careful, softer than Eddie thought he would ever deserve. Eddie’s jaw aches with it, his tongue throbs, his heart pounds in his throat. He presses in helplessly, and the kiss turns deeper, heavier. Eddie feels swept away by it, his head still swimming with all of the information and emotions he’s trying and failing to process, his body moving on autopilot. It’s strange, because Eddie has never really done this. Not like this. None of this is familiar to him, and yet he moves as if he’s pulled along by a greater force, muscle memory that he never developed. He’s thought about this—god, he’s thought about it—but he never knew it would be so easy, like breathing. The way he cards his fingers into Richie’s hair, the way he arches into Richie’s hand at his waist, the way he scrapes his bottom teeth over Richie’s lip. It’s so good that it makes his head hurt, it makes him want to _scream._ It makes him want to howl at the fucking moon. 

“Eddie,” Richie breathes against his mouth, and it makes Eddie lose his mind. 

“Please,” he says, and has no idea what he’s asking for. 

Still, Richie seems to know, or at least he’s willing to do something, because he tugs on Eddie’s waist, pulls him in closer, and all Eddie can do is swing his leg over Richie’s thighs so that he’s straddling his lap, falling into him. Martin grumbles and jumps down to the floor as Eddie runs his palms feverishly over Richie’s ridiculously broad shoulders, knees spread around his thick waist, and feels faint even as he kisses him again, tipping his head to the side to get closer, opening his mouth to kiss deeper. He wants to swallow Richie whole, and it makes him feel insane. It’s terrifying, actually, how much he’s feeling, and knowing how much it will change everything. How nothing in his life will be the same after this. He is so fucking happy, but he is so, so scared. 

“Tell me again,” he breathes, arching as Richie pushes a hand up the back of his shirt, spans his waist with his palm. It touches the edge of his scar, and it lights Eddie up.

“Tell you what?” Richie responds against his lips. 

“Tell me,” Eddie says, and is unable to vocalize it past that. 

But Richie understands, Richie always understands. “I love you,” he says, like a promise. 

Eddie chokes back a whine. “Again.”

Richie’s lips curve up against Eddie’s. “I love you. I love you so fucking much, Eddie, honestly, it’s. It’s insane how much, I feel crazy with how much.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, because he _knows._ He knows what Richie means. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, _holy shit,”_ Richie agrees. He rubs his palm over Eddie’s back, kisses the corner of his mouth. Slides his fingertips up Eddie’s spine to circle his tattoo. He shivers. 

“I literally, I can’t—” Eddie takes a deep breath, and then kisses Richie so hard it makes him feel dizzy, and pushes his tongue into his mouth in a way that is probably disgusting and too much but the urge is so strong that he can’t help it, he _has to._

Richie makes a muffled sound that Eddie thinks might be horrified protest until he surges up into it, slides his tongue against Eddie’s, wraps both arms around Eddie’s waist to hold him close. Eddie feels like his fangs are going to push through his gums, like his fingers are going to transform into claws. He feels feral. He wants to attack Richie’s mouth, and only resists because in his experience werewolf saliva and open wounds don’t mix. 

Instead, he rips his mouth away and kisses down to Richie’s square jaw, down to his throat, scraping his blunt teeth over warm skin, pressing his tongue over his pulse as Richie moans threadily. He doesn’t even really register what he’s doing until he pulls away and sees a livid bruise low on Richie’s throat, close to his collar, and the perfect imprint of at least eight teeth. 

Eddie flushes hot. “Oh my god,” he says, hand flying to cover it up. “Oh my god, Rich, fuck. I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

Richie laughs, pulling him in by the waist, kissing him sloppily against his jaw. He’s still breathing hard. One hand migrates down to his thigh, over Eddie’s own set of bite marks, raised scar tissue on his skin. “Dude, what? Why are you apologizing.”

“Richie, I fucking _bit you,”_ Eddie says, horror flooding him, cold and sharp. “Rich, oh my god, I fucking—”

“Oh, please,” Richie laughs, but when Eddie’s breaths go a little wheezy he sobers, frames Eddie’s face to make him look at him, his eyes wide and clear. “Hey. Eddie. It’s okay. You’re not even, like, the bitiest person I’ve ever made out with.”

A completely ridiculous growl forms in Eddie’s chest, and he swallows it down.

Richie grins like he heard it anyway. “I’m serious. Normal human people bite, too. You didn’t even break skin. Go crazy, wolf boy.”

Eddie still feels queasy when he moves his hand away and sees the mark again. He shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

Richie shrugs, chest still heaving a little. “Alright, well, _I_ like it. But if you don’t wanna, don’t do it again. I’m gonna have a hell of a time covering this one anyway.”

Eddie groans, curling down to hide his face in Richie’s shoulder. “God, fuck, I don’t know what I’m doing, I—”

“What, things never got hot and heavy with Myra?”

“Jesus, _don’t_ bring up my ex-wife when I’m sitting in your lap,” Eddie says. “But also, no, they really didn’t.”

Richie’s hands tighten on his waist. “What, seriously?”

Eddie frowns, and hates that they’re talking about this right now. “Are you kidding? No. She had some, uh, issues with the whole werewolf thing, and I had some issues with the whole _woman_ thing. It wasn’t really… We weren’t really like that.”

Richie makes a vague sound. “So am I, like. The first person you’ve ever made out with?”

Eddie shrugs, still hiding from this entire conversation in Richie’s very spacious shoulder. “There were a couple times in college where I was like...drunk, and messed around with some guys at parties. But other than that, uh. Yeah, I guess.”

“Oh my _god,”_ Richie says. 

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Eddie spits. 

“What? No, I’m not even making fun of you, dude, this is like. This is sixteen-year-old Richie Tozier’s dream come _true._ This is _great._ Like obviously I am so sorry things were so shit for you, you didn’t deserve that, everyone else was missing the fuck out, et cetera. But also, _hell yeah.”_

Eddie flushes. “I just. Life for me has not been...typical. Like. I’m a _fucking_ werewolf. I’ve been, like, a bit wary about where I put my teeth.”

Finally, Richie pushes him back a little, hooks a finger under his chin until Eddie looks at him. Says, voice low, “Put your teeth all over me, baby.”

Eddie tries to glare, and then lets out a snort. “Oh my god. Please shut the fuck up.”

Richie grins. Says, “I am so fucking obsessed with you.”

Eddie _feels_ his cheeks go pink. God, he feels like a teenager. “Yeah,” he says, scratching the back of his head. 

Richie laughs. “Yeah. I think we should make out some more.”

And Eddie agrees, so he leans back in, and they stop talking. Richie’s hands on his waist are steady and strong. 

Imagine this. You are a werewolf. You are forty-one years old, and you have been lied to a thousand times, you are a monster and have never believed you could have something good. You have never believed that something monstrous could be worthy of love. And you are terrified. But finally, finally, you are home. 

🌕

Getting all of the Losers together is beautiful chaos. 

It’s a bright, sunny day by the lake. Richie tugs the brim of his hat lower over his eyes and looks up from his seat on the dock to where Bill and Stan are trying to figure out how to turn on the grill without making anything explode, and Ben is attempting to inflate Audra’s pool float for her, and Patty is trying to figure out what to do with the spider she caught and evicted from the kitchen for Bev. Mike is unloading a cooler from someone’s car that isn’t his own, and Eddie is supervising all of this with pinched eyebrows over his huge, ugly sunglasses. 

“I really think maybe we should just google the instruction manual for that,” he tells Bill, who is turning knobs on the grill and frowning. 

“Well, Eddie, if you can find a phone that gets data out here, I would love that,” Stan says. “So far we’re 0 for 6, but feel free to continue asking around.”

“Does the cabin not have _wi-fi?”_ Eddie asks shrilly, as if Stan just suggested there’s no drinkable water. 

“There is, but we can’t remember the password,” Bill says. 

“I’m going to lose my mind,” Eddie says. _“Turn off the gas, you’re going to start a forest fire.”_

“Is this far enough away?” Patty calls, carrying her captive towards the treeline. 

“Absolutely not, Patricia, I need you to understand that I literally saw your husband’s severed head _turn into a spider_ a year ago, and Ben had to stab it in the head, and I’m still recovering,” Bev says. “I want it far enough away that it’ll take the rest of the week for it to get back here.”

“Yes ma’am,” Patty says, moving farther away. “I bet he was a cute spider though.”

“He wasn’t!” Eddie calls. 

“Ben, sweetie, if you pass out I’m not taking the blame,” Audra says, watching Ben’s face go increasingly red as her pool float takes shape. “When I asked if someone could blow it up I was really thinking about a bike pump or something.” 

“I’ve almost got it,” Ben insists, and then adds, “unless someone else wants to take a turn?”

“Is the water actually safe to swim in?” Eddie asks. 

Richie grins. “Eddie, baby, how about you come over here and do some deep breathing exercises or something?”

Eddie looks at him, his jaw a hard, stubborn line, and then his shoulders droop. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

He makes his way over to the dock overhanging the water, and Richie shifts back from the edge and pats the space between his legs until Eddie gently lowers himself to sit there, his back to Richie’s front. Richie winds his arms around his waist and hooks his chin over his shoulder and exhales. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. “Sorry for being, like, a maniac.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. If you weren’t at least a little high-strung on vacation I’d suspect you’d been body-snatched.”

“Glad to live up to expectations,” Eddie says flatly, but leans back against Richie and sighs, shoulders relaxing in increments. “Moon’s waxing,” he says softly. 

“I know,” Richie says, glancing up to where he can see the broadening face of it in the clear blue sky. Eddie’s not a big fan of day moons. 

Eddie shrugs stiffly. “It’s not an excuse.”

Richie presses his nose into the side of his neck. “Kinda is,” he says, and then kisses the curve of his shoulder where it’s exposed by the loose collar of his shirt. Eddie hums, and Richie kisses his nape, tugs down the back of his shirt to press his lips to the tattoo at the top of his spine. 

Eddie shivers. Richie smiles and presses his face into his hair, loose and curling at the edges. 

“Hey, lovebirds!” Bev calls from the front of the house. “How about your stop flirting by the lake and come help me unload?”

“I don’t think I will!” Richie sings back, before Eddie can respond. “You shouldn’t have brought so much luggage, Marsh, we’re only here for five days!”

“Didn’t see you complaining while you helped Eddie bring in his!” Bev laughs. 

“He’s cuter than you,” Richie says, and grins when Eddie elbows him gently in the side. 

“Being adorable and in love is no excuse to be lazy!” 

“Oh, Eddie!” Mike interjects suddenly. “I brought that book I mentioned last week. About werewolves in the Northern United States?”

Eddie tenses in Richie’s arms, and Richie hears him take a tight, quick breath, but then he relaxes, and Richie squeezes him around the middle. “Yeah,” he calls back. “Thanks, Mike. I’ll take a look later.”

Richie holds onto him, kisses his shoulder softly. 

It’s been three months since everything that happened on Eddie’s couch. Three crazy, scary, intense months. Richie came out to the rest of his friends, one by one, starting with Bev and ending with Mike, and each time it was unexpected and terrifying and freeing. He’s started thinking about coming out publicly, too, and that’s even scarier. 

Eddie came out in the past three months, too. First as gay, because it would be pretty obvious once Richie blurted to everyone that they were together, and then as a werewolf, just recently. It was hard, the weeks leading up to it. Helping Eddie through that, holding his hand. Seeing him, so scared of the future. Helping him to find the words, the right time, the courage. But they got through it. All of it. Together. 

And then through it all, Eddie’s been trying to find a new place to live in LA, an apartment close to Richie’s but still affordable for someone still looking for a new job flexible enough to work around the phases of the moon. Richie had asked him, in the beginning, if Eddie just wanted to move in with him, at least for a while. But Eddie was firm about wanting his own space, about not ruining anything by moving too fast but also just about wanting a place of his own. A home that was just his. 

So it’s been three insanely stressful, incredible months, and now it’s been three weeks since Richie last saw Eddie, who’s been working around the clock since the last full moon to tie up some loose ends in New York. It’s August now, and they’ve all gathered for the first anniversary of That Shit That Went Down In Derry, and it’s so, so wonderful to see everyone but Richie hasn’t been able to catch Eddie alone for even a minute since they arrived to make out with him the way he wants to. It’s going to drive him to madness, he can feel it. 

But at least for now they’re here, together, sitting on the dock by the water, and Richie can hold onto Eddie’s waist in front of god and the whole world, and feel the heat of his body, and admire the way his legs look in these yellow linen shorts he got from Bev, and. And there are no more secrets. All of his cards are on the table. And everyone’s still here. 

But Richie can’t think about that too much, or else he’ll burst into fucking tears. _Again._

They get up and peel themselves apart eventually to help with dinner, once Bill and Stan have finally gotten the grill on and the kitchen is spider-free. Richie sits inside with Bev and Audra and Mike, prepping vegetables and finding all the necessary dishes, and Eddie stays outside with the others, supervising the barbecue with undoubtedly charming intensity. And then they’re all outside again, balancing plates on their knees in lawn chairs next to the lake, eating and talking over each other and laughing and it’s so, so good. Richie never knew it could be so good. 

Later, after everyone’s eaten as much as humanly possible, Richie’s in the middle of spraying down plates with the hose when Ben pipes up to say, “Hey, where’s Eddie?”

Richie looks around, surprised. He hadn’t even noticed him go.

Stan hefts an armful of firewood on his way towards the bonfire pit and says, “He went back inside to check on Martin and hasn’t come back.”

Richie laughs, rolls his eyes. “I’ll go find him.”

“Sure you will,” Bev says, grinning at him from where she’s rubbing sunscreen onto Audra’s shoulders. 

Richie sends her a cheesy wink, and carries a stack of dripping plates inside to dump into the sink before heading up the stairs towards the bedrooms. 

As expected, Eddie’s sitting on their bed for the week, petting Martin in his lap and watching everyone else through the window. He looks up at Richie as he walks in, smiles, but doesn’t say anything. Richie sits down next to him and rubs along Martin’s spine. 

“Needed a break?” he says. 

Eddie shrugs. “Wanted to make sure Martin was okay in here. Got a little caught up in thinking about things.”

Richie hums. “Overwhelmed?”

Eddie shakes his head. “A little, but.” He watches Mike scoop Bev up and toss her off the dock into the water. “I don’t know. I never thought I’d have something like this.”

Richie follows his gaze and nods. 

“For...for thirty-five years, I thought it would be impossible to have this. Friends who, who knew and still loved me. Everyone who’s ever known has used it to control me. And...they used the fact that they were the only ones who knew to control me. And made me scared of telling anyone else.” He takes a deep breath, and Richie reaches out, wraps his arms around him and pulls him in close to his body. Martin hops down from his lap, and Eddie turns into him and sighs. 

“You’ve been...so fucking brave,” Richie says against his temple. “Figuring out how to break out of that cycle. I know it doesn’t feel like it but you’re so fucking brave, Eddie.”

Eddie exhales shakily, and leans into him. “I’m just happy to be here. With all of you.”

“Me too,” Richie says, and sweeps his hand up Eddie’s back to touch the spot where It’s claw pierced through his ribs right in front of his eyes. “And, just. No matter what, I’ll always be grateful for that fucking wolf if it’s the thing that kept you alive to be here.”

Eddie sniffs. “Yeah.” 

Richie smiles, and turns a little so that he can wrap his arms tighter around him, crush his body to his chest. “God,” he says, a little louder, a little less serious. “Did you know that I love you so much it makes me stupid?”

Eddie laughs, muffled against his shirt. “Why?”

Richie hums, rocks them back and forth. “You make me feel like myself. And like that’s a good person to be.”

Eddie tips his head up, grinning, and says, “It is.”

Richie makes a helpless, happy sound, and crushes Eddie a little, and says, “Now, let’s make out before someone comes to find us.”

Eddie laughs, and pushes his arms up to wrap around Richie’s neck, and says, “Why the fuck not.”

Kissing Eddie on his couch that night in May had been the best night of Richie’s life, bar none. That being said, everything about the actual kissing has only gotten better over time. It had been admittedly kind of obvious that Eddie had no idea what he was really doing in the beginning, but Richie had been charitably willing to sit down and put in the work, so to say, to get him up to speed. Which means, of course, that Eddie knows exactly how to climb up into Richie’s lap and press him gently down to the bed, how to slot their mouths together to kiss him so deeply it makes Richie dizzy, how to slide their tongues together in a way that makes Richie’s breath stutter. 

He sighs softly, slides his hands down over Eddie’s ass to the backs of his thighs, rubs his fingertips over the raised scar there until Eddie shivers. He thinks this is a victory until Eddie bites at his lip and shoves both hands up under the hem of his shirt, and Richie remembers that he is helpless in the face of Eddie Kaspbrak’s intensity. He gives in and lies back to take whatever Eddie gives him, groans softly as Eddie kisses him within an inch of his life, tracing the lines of his torso with his hands, squeezing Richie’s hips between his knees. It’s all Richie can do to stay fully conscious and reciprocate, clutching at his waist, sucking gently on his tongue. Eddie is a force of nature, and Richie lives to stand in the eye of the storm. 

“Did you know,” Eddie mumbles against his mouth, smoothing his hands over Richie’s shoulders, “that you are so _fucking_ big?”

Richie laughs, and stretches his hand across the small of Eddie’s back so that Eddie arches into it. “Does it offend you?”

 _“Yes,”_ Eddie says, kissing up his jaw. “It makes me furious. Who gave you the right?”

“I gave me the right,” Richie hums, tipping his head to the side to give him better access. “Specifically to make you mad. Are you gonna give me a hickey?”

 _“No,”_ Eddie says, right before he bites down just behind Richie’s ear. “Fuck you.”

Richie grins, and hears Martin jump up onto the bed moments before he feels him try to squeeze his fat, wrinkly body between them. 

“Go away, you miserable demon,” Eddie says, shoving at him gently, trying to attach his mouth back to Richie’s throat. “Stop being a jealous little bitch.”

“All the boys want me,” Richie sings, stretching his neck to kiss Eddie’s chin. “I can’t help being so sexy.”

“I can’t believe I have to fight my cat for the right to sit in your lap,” Eddie says, elbowing Martin away fruitlessly. “I should have left you in New York.”

Martin meows loudly, and Eddie laughs and scratches him under the chin before lying down along Richie’s body so that there’s no room for him. 

Richie smiles broadly, tips his head to the side to catch Eddie’s warm mouth. Kisses him as indulgently as he wants to, because he can, because he’s allowed. “Should we go back out?”

“I think the fuck not,” Eddie says, humming against his mouth. “I’m not letting my cat boss me around.”

“They’re definitely going to think we’re having sex in here,” Richie says. 

“Well if that’s the case I don’t want them to think I’m that fast,” Eddie says, and Richie laughs so hard Eddie has to kiss him again to shut him up. 

They do get up and go back outside, eventually. The sun is dipping towards the horizon, and Mike and Ben are trying to start the bonfire. Eddie looks like he wants to go antagonize them for not doing it right, but Richie holds tight to his hand, tugs him back. Eddie rolls his eyes and smiles. 

Four months ago, Richie told Eddie that for most of his life he’s felt like he was missing something. Here, next to a lake with all of his closest friends who know him and love him, and holding onto the only person he’s ever loved, with the waxing moon hanging heavy in the sky, he thinks he’s finally found it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so so much to everyone who's read, enjoyed, and left me nice words! writing and posting this fic was such a struggle but you've all been so kind and it means everything to me <3 follow me on twitter @darkrednights if you're not sick of me!


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